Proposed PCIe 6.0 spec promises to double bandwidth of v5.0

PCI-SIG aims to publish final specification for PCIe 6.0 in 2021

The Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) has unveiled the proposed specification for PCI Express (PCIe) 6.0, promising to double the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0.

The announcement came at the PCI-SIG Developers Conference 2019, currently running in Santa Clara, California.

Since its introduction in 2003, PCIe technology has become nearly ubiquitous across the industry due to its reliability and efficiency. The technology is scalable for a wide range of products.

The responsibility to define PCIe specifications lies with the PCI-SIG, which aims to double PCIe bandwidth every three years.

According to PCI-SIG, PCIe 6.0 will offer double the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0 and four times the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0.

The newest version will deliver I/O transfer rates of 256GB per second across 16 lanes. PCI-SIG says that this is possible using Pulse Amplitude Modulation (a form of signal modulation where the message information is encoded in the amplitude of a series of signal pulses) with four levels (PAM-4).

Using PAM-4 technology, it will be possible to carry twice as much data as existing methods without using high frequencies or needing to double the transmission bandwidth.

PCIe 6.0 will also feature low-latency Forward Error Correction and other efficiency improvements. The technology will be compatible with previous generations and will offer 'cost-effective performance' to users.

"Continuing the trend we set with the PCIe 5.0 specification, the PCIe 6.0 specification is on a fast timeline," said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG Chairman and President.

"Due to the continued commitment of our member companies, we are on pace to double the bandwidth yet again in a time frame that will meet industry demand for throughput."

But PCIe 6.0 technology will take many more years before it finally reaches in the hands of users.

PCIe 4.0 isn't quite in-market yet, and PCIe 5.0 is not expected to arrive until 2020 at the earliest; PCI-SIG only finalised PCIe 5.0 specifications last month. Moreover, AMD announced at Computex event in May that the Ryzen 3800X and X570 chipset would be the first to support PCIe 4.0 and its 64GBps interface.

According to PCI-SIG, the PCIe 6.0 specification will be published in 2021. Peripherals and processors based on the technology will arrive in the markets by 2022 or 2023.