PCIe 6.0 Specs Reaching 64GT/s , Doubling Bandwidth and Power efficiency of PCIe 5.0

PCI-SIG, the organization responsibleof the PCIe standard, announced the official release of the PCIe 6.0 spec, reaching 64GT/s.

PCIe 6.0 spec features:

• 64GT/s raw data rate and up to 256GB/s via x16 configuration

• Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels (PAM4) signaling and leverages existing PAM4 already available in the industry

• Lightweight Forward Error Correct (FEC) and Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) mitigate the bit error rate increase associated with PAM4 signaling

• Flit (flow control unit) based encoding supports PAM4 modulation and enables more than double the bandwidth gain

• Updated Packet layout used in Flit Mode to provide additional functionality and simplify processing

• Maintains backwards compatibility with all previous gens of PCIe technology

PCIe technology has served as the de facto interconnect of choice for nearly two decades. The PCIe 6.0 spec doubles the bandwidth and power efficiency of the PCIe 5.0 spec (32GT/s), while providing low latency and reduced bandwidth overhead.

“PCI-SIG is pleased to announce the release of the PCe 6.0 spec less than 3 years after the PCIe 5.0 spec,” said Al Yanes, chairperson and president,. “PCIe 6.0 technology is the cost-effective and scalable interconnect solution that will continue to impact data-intensive markets like data center, AI/ML, HPC, automotive, IoT, and military/aerospace, while also protecting industry investments by maintaining backwards compatibility with all previous gens of PCIe technology.“

“With the PCIe SSD market forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 40% to over 800EB by 2025, PCI-SIG continues to meet the future needs of storage applications,” said Greg Wong, founder and principal analyst, Forward Insights. “With the storage industry transitioning to PCIe 4.0 technology and on the cusp of introducing PCIe 5.0 technology, companies will begin adopting PCIe 6.0 technology in their roadmaps to future-proof their products and take advantage of the high bandwidth and low latency that PCIe technology offers.“

“There is a growing demand for ever-increasing performance in many segments in the data center such as high-performance computing and AI,” said Ashish Nadkarni, group VP, infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group, IDC. “Within 3 to 5 years the application landscape will look very different and companies will likely begin updating their roadmaps accordingly. The advancement of an established standard like PCIe 6.0 architecture will serve the industry well in establishing composable infrastructure for performance intensive computing use cases.”

PCI-SIG members can download the full spec.

Resources:
PCIe 6.0 technology animated video
PCIe 6.0 FAQ
PCIe 6.0 spec resource webpage