PCI Express 5.0 to double bandwidth to 32GT/s

PCI-SIG announces the feature set of PCI Express 5.0 is now complete. The organization published version 0.9 of the specification and reports they'll be able to meet the goal to double the bandwidth to 32GT/s. The final PCI Express 5.0 specification is expected to be published later this quarter.

The main drive behind PCI Express 5.0 is demand from the server, machine learning/AI, and Internet of Things markets. PCI Express 4.0 was released over a year ago but hasn't even made it to the consumer market yet.

Our PCI-SIG® members have been hard at work. In 2017, we delivered PCI Express® 4.0 with its 16 GT/s, while also diving headfirst into PCI Express 5.0 development – first announced at our annual PCI-SIG DevCon in June 2017. With data-hungry applications like artificial intelligence, machine learning, enterprise servers and more, growing in popularity and capabilities, we knew that it was only a matter of time before the market would demand greater bandwidth.

Thanks to the diligence and dedication of our workgroups, I’m pleased to announce that the feature complete PCIe® 5.0, Version 0.9 has now been published to members. This is a great indicator that PCI-SIG will be able to meet its goal of doubling bandwidth—from 16 GT/S to 32 GT/s—in a record less than two years.

PCIe 5.0 delivers a speed upgrade that will reach a data rate of 32 GT/s and offer adaptable lane configurations, while maintaining our low power goal. The new spec builds off of PCIe 4.0, which already supports higher speeds via extended tags and credits. The PCIe 5.0 specification touts a variety of great features:

Electrical changes to improve signal integrity and mechanical performance of connectors

CEM connector targeted to be backwards compatible for add-in cards

Maintains backward compatibility with PCIe 4.0, 3.x, 2.x and 1.x

We are excited about the revolutionary and unprecedented capabilities of PCIe 5.0 and are on target to publish PCIe 5.0, Version 1.0 in the first quarter of 2019.