PCI Express 7.0 debuts in 2022, but it’s a work in progress. Version 0.3 of the specification was released in mid-2023, and now PCI-SIG has upgraded to version 0.5 – with full release expected in 2025.
That’s good, consumer adoption of PCIe 5.0 is still growing, and there’s PCIe 6.0 to watch after that. Each new version has twice the bandwidth of the previous version.
PCIe 7.0 targets 128 gigabit transfers per second. Depending on the configuration, this could mean 512GB/s on the x16 link and 32GB/s on the x1 link. Check out the chart below – basically with each new generation you can halve the number of lanes to get the same speed, or get double the speed with the same number of lanes.
Even the powerful Nvidia RTX 4090 uses PCIe 4.0 slots, as does the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. As we speak, 5.0 adoption is still ongoing and we may see it on next-gen cards. According to the chart, PCIe 4.0 x16 link can only manage 64GB/s transfer speed, PCIe 7.0 only needs 2 lanes to achieve this.
Of course, it will be quite some time before we see PCIe 7.0 hardware in consumer products. For applications that need to move large amounts of data, this will occur first in the server. PCI-SIG expects the new standard to be used for 800G Ethernet, artificial intelligence/machine learning equipment, cloud servers and even quantum computers.
The goals of PCI Express 7.0 are:
- Delivers 128 GT/s raw bitrate and up to 512 GB/s bidirectional bitrate via x16 configuration
- Utilizes PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation Level 4) signaling
- Pay attention to channel parameters and coverage
- Continue to achieve low latency and high reliability goals
- Improve power efficiency
- Maintains backward compatibility with all previous generations of PCIe technology
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