From SATA and U.2 to USB and HDMI, motherboards have a variety of interfaces that let you pair all the necessary components and accessories to your PC. Among them, PCI Express is one of the most important interconnects as it provides the high bandwidth premium graphics cards need to render all your favorite games.
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In fact, PCIe is extensively used for other peripherals as well, including capture cards, SSDs, network cards, USB hubs, and sound cards. In order to keep up with the ever-growing speeds of new hardware, PCI-SIG has been improving the PCIe standard for decades, and PCI Express Gen 7 is poised to be the fastest version of the interface to date. So, we’ve compiled a list of all the improvements planned for the upcoming PCIe 7.0 standard.
What is PCIe 7.0?
Announced back in 2022, PCIe 7.0 is the newest addition to the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express family that intends to bolster the transfer speeds of the lightning-fast interconnect to the next level. As the successor to the yet-to-be-released sixth-gen PCIe standard, PCIe Gen 7 is in its early stages of development and PCI-SIG has yet to finalize its official specifications.
Nevertheless, as per the information disclosed by the consortium, PCIe 7.0 will build upon the new features introduced by its predecessor while striving for high efficiency and low latency. Like the other members of the PCIe series, it will be backward compatible with older hardware.
What are the features of PCIe 7.0?
Mind-boggling transfer rates and bandwidth
The doubling of bandwidth and data speeds in every generation of PCIe is one feature that PCI-SIG has always implemented in its widespread interconnect family. PCIe Gen 7 is no exception to this rule, and it features a massive 512 GB/s bandwidth in x16 configuration. Likewise, the data transfer rates have also been boosted from 64 GT/s to 128 GT/s.
|
PCIe Generations |
Bandwidth |
Transfer rates |
Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
|
PCIe 4.0 (x16) |
64GB/s |
16 GT/s |
8GHz |
|
PCIe 5.0 (x16) |
128GB/s |
32 GT/s |
16GHz |
|
PCIe 6.0 (x16) |
256GB/s |
64 GT/s |
16GHz |
|
PCIe 7.0 (x16) |
512GB/s |
128 GT/s |
?? (Perhaps 32GHz) |
It’s worth noting that there has been no mention of the operational frequency of PCIe 7.0 in the official specs chart. Up until PCIe Gen 5, the frequency was the third metric that doubled every generation. However, PCI Express 6.0 had the same frequency as its predecessor, though it used a clever new signaling method to achieve higher bandwidth and transfer speeds. This is because doubling the frequency from 16GHz to 32GHz reportedly leads to an exponential rise in the occurrence of errors. So, it will be interesting to see what new measures the folks at PCI-SIG come up with to increase the bandwidth and data rate without compromising the stability of the system.
PAM4 signaling, just like PCIe 6.0
PAM4 or Four-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation is a new signaling mechanism implemented on PCIe 6.0 that doubles the number of bits transmitted per clock cycle. Previously, all PCIe variants utilized two voltage levels, 0 and 1, to send one data bit in each signal period. However, PAM4 uses four different voltage levels: 00, 01, 10, and 11 instead of two, effectively increasing its transmission capacity to two bits of information every clock cycle. According to the latest draft of PCIe 7.0, PAM4 will make a comeback in the upcoming standard.
When will PCIe 7.0 hit the market?
Since PCIe 7.0 is still being worked on, there’s a lot we don’t know about the standard. Assuming PCI-SIG’s estimations are right on the mark and the specs sheet gets finalized in 2025, we won’t see devices rocking the new interface anytime soon.
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For starters, PCIe 6.0 has yet to make its official debut. What’s more, despite being released five years ago, there hasn’t been a single consumer-grade GPU from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel that leverages the blazing-fast speeds of PCIe Gen 5. Going by PCI-SIG’s claims about PCIe Gen 7 peripherals releasing by 2027, it’ll take a while before the cutting-edge standard gains widespread popularity in the consumer space.