PCIe 5.0 seems to have gained widespread support, but as is often the case in this industry, new technology becomes old before we know it. So, the PCI Special Interest Group today released a definitive specification for PCI Express 6.0 (PCIe 6.0), laying the groundwork for the next generation of SSDs.
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Let's get straight to the speeds that matter. This next version doubles raw data transfer speeds from 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) in PCIe 5.0 to 64GT/s in PCIe 6.0 and up to 8 GB/sec in each direction or 256 GB/s in an x16 configuration.
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Now that the final version of the specification has been approved, the consortium expects to see the first commercial products hit the market in the next 12 to 18 months, which means sometime in 2023. Note the “commercial”—these ultra-fast storage devices will find their way into servers before you see PCIe 6.0 SSDs in a consumer product. The PCI Special Interest Group says that “initial targets” for the technology include artificial intelligence and machine learning, data center networking and storage, industrial, automotive, and military.
This timeline is similar to what we saw with PCIe 5.0, the current standard that was finalized in 2019. It’s worth noting that just a few weeks ago, at CES 2022, Samsung and Adata introduced the first PCIe 5.0 SSDs aimed at enterprise customers. It’s also worth noting that while Intel’s 12th-generation desktop chips support PCIe 5.0, the new mobile processors are limited to PCIe Gen 4, a decision Intel told Gizmodo that was made to keep costs down and because there were no PCIe Gen 5 cards available for validation.
The new standard is a major achievement for the PCI Special Interest Group, which has achieved its goal of doubling PCI Express speeds every three years since the spec's inception in 2003. In this case, it did so using a completely different technology called PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels).
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We won't bore you with the technical details (those interested can learn more here), but the folks at AnandTech say the change is "arguably the biggest in the history of the standard." And it not only allows for faster speeds, but it enables low-latency operation.
When it arrives, PCIe 6.0 will be compatible with existing hardware, so components that use PCIe 5.0 or earlier will work fine when connected to a PCIe 6.0 host and vice versa.
The new standard is coming to address the growing number of applications that require high-bandwidth, low-latency data transfers. Commercial markets have the greatest need and budgets to adopt PCIe 6.0 early, but eventually, the standard will find its way into consumer products like graphics cards and SSDs.
Information source: gizmodo.com
