The latest draft of the PCIe 7.0 specification is available

The final version of PCIe 7.0 is expected later this year, and the last draft of the specification for version 0.9 has already been released. This is a definite milestone that signaled no further changes to the standard.

This specification is generally targeted at the data-intensive market segment, such as HPC (high-performance computing), hyper-scale data centers, cloud computing, aerospace, and AI/ML applications.

The new standard will have a significant impact on increasing throughput when compared to PCIe 5.0.

Highlights of the new standard

• Utilizes a pulse amplitude modulation scheme with PAM4;
• High-reliability standards and minimal latency;
• Better power efficiency;
• Data transfer rates of 128 GT/s and up to 512 GBytes/s in x16 configuration;
• Backward compatibility with all versions of PCIe.

PCIe 7.0-enabled devices are not expected to hit the market until 2027-28. After this standard is approved, PCIe 8.0 will be developed, which in turn is likely to have a bandwidth of 1 Tbyte/s.

The 5.0 standard was approved in 2019, and it doubled the bandwidth. The 6.0 version, meanwhile, became available in 2021.