Gate – Gizmodo

We’re only now seeing widespread support for PCIe 5.0, but as is often the case in this industry, new technology is old technology when it comes out. And so, the PCI Special Interest Group released the final PCI Express 6.0 specifications today, laying the groundwork for the next (next?) generation of SSDs.

Let’s get straight to speed, shall we? This next edition doubles raw data transfer speeds from 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) on PCIe 5.0 to 64GT/s on PCIe 6.0 and up to 8 GB/s in each direction or 256 GB/s in x16 configuration.

Now that the final version of the specification has been approved, the consortium looks forward this means that the first commercial products will appear on the market within the next 12-18 months sometime in 2023. Note: “Commercial” – These ultra-fast storage devices will hit servers before a PCIe 6.0 SSD appears in a consumer product. PCI Special Interest Group says the technology’s “initial target applications” include artificial intelligence and machine learning, networking and storage in data centers, industrial, automotive and military.

This timeline is similar to what we saw with PCIe 5.0; the current standard was finalized in 2019, but it was only a few weeks ago, in preparation for CES 2022, that Samsung and Adata unveiled the first PCI 5.0 SSDs for enterprise customers. It’s also worth noting that although the Intel 12th-gpl desktop chip support PCIe 5.0, its new mobile processors are limited to PCIe Gen 4, a decision made by Intel to keep costs low and also because no PCIe Gen 5 cards were available for review.

The new standard is a significant achievement for the PCI Special Interest Group, which has achieved its goal of doubling PCI Express speeds every three years since the specification began in 2003. In this case, it did so using a completely different signaling technology called PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 Levels).

I won’t bombard you with technical details (those interested can learn more Here), but people from AnandTech say there is a change “probably the greatest in the history of the standard.” And not only does it enable higher speeds, but enables low-latency operation.

When it arrives, PCIe 6.0 will be backwards-compatible with existing hardware, so components using PCIe 5.0 or older will work fine when connected to a PCIe 6.0 host and vice versa.

The new standard is a response to the growing number of applications requiring high-bandwidth and low-latency data transfer. Commercial markets have greater needs and the budgets required to adopt PCIe 6.0 early, but eventually the standard will find its way into consumer products such as graphics cards and SSDs – I’m sure it will arrive just in time for PCIe 7.0.

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