The Complete Draft specification of PCIe 6.0 has arrived

[midian182]

What just happened? We’ve only recently started to see SSDs that take full advantage of the blistering speeds offered by PCIe 4.0, and last year brought the initial specification for PCIe 5.0. But the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) doesn’t stand still. The latest version (0.7) of the PCIe 6.0 specification has been released ahead of its finalization in 2021.

The headline feature here is the increased data transfer rate of 64 GT/s per pin, double that of PCIe 5.0, and four times the speed of PCIe 4.0. It also features pulse amplitude modulation with four levels (PAM4) signaling, which is used in GDDR6X memory.

Elsewhere, PCIe 6.0 will use low-latency Forward Error Correction (FEC) with additional mechanisms to improve bandwidth efficiency, and, as expected, it offers backwards compatibility with all previous specification generations.

As noted by Tom’s Hardware, the release of this 'Complete Draft' version is a milestone in that no new features can be added and electrical specifications of the technology have been validated using test chips.

The next step in the process is the release of version 0.9 (the Final Draft), where PCI-SIG members perform internal reviews of the technology for their intellectual property and patents. That’s followed by version 1.0—the Final release.

The final specification for PCIe 6.0 is expected to arrive sometime in the second half of 2021, but it will be a while before we see it appearing in consumer products—based on previous PCIe generations, we won’t be buying our 256GB/s PCIe 6.0 SSDs until around 2023 or 2024.

"Continuing the trend we set with the PCIe 5.0 specification, the PCIe 6.0 specification is on a fast timeline,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG Chairman and President. "Due to the continued commitment of our member companies, we are on pace to double the bandwidth yet again in a time frame that will meet industry demand for throughput."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87469-complete-draft-specifications-pcie-60-has-arrived.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Man, if I could get my investments to double every three years I would have retired a long time ago!

 

[fps4ever]

At some point it just becomes a number like web browser versions unless you can utilize the bandwidth, other than edge cases.

 

[VitalyT]

we won’t be buying our 256GB/s PCIe 6.0 SSDs until around 2023 or 2024

What?! Where did you even get those numbers? Or did you mean 256Gb/s? Then you need to correct it in couple of places.

PCIe 6.0 maximum speed for M.2 SSD-s will be about 28GB/s, with 32GB/s theoretical, limited by the caching logic, in line with what we see today.

Also, worth noting that PCIe 5.0 has been in use for some time now, in the server market, it just doesn't exist in the consumer market yet. For example, Intel promises PCIe 5.0 in the end of 2021, and perhaps even skip PCIe 4.0.

 

[quadibloc]

Also, worth noting that PCIe 5.0 has been in use for some time now, in the server market, it just doesn't exist in the consumer market yet. For example, Intel promises PCIe 5.0 in the end of 2021, and perhaps even skip PCIe 4.0.

The article at your link describes an Intel prototype server system, not an existing server product that is currently in actual use, so, no, PCIe 5.0 doesn't exist in servers any more than it exists in consumer products. Development work on making it available in the future is what is happening now.

 

[Raytrace3D]

Can they just add more power through the bus so we don't have to have ridiculous looking power cables connected to our video cards please?

 

[neeyik]

Can they just add more power through the bus so we don't have to have ridiculous looking power cables connected to our video cards please?

The PCIe slot on provides power via a handful in pins in common connector part. Graphics cards really only use the five +12V pins and at the maximum 75W, that’s 1.25A of current in each connector. To preserve backwards compatibility, no other connectors can be used nor can they be made thicker to cope with more current. Until an entirely new GPU socket comes along, we’ll be stuck with using additional power cables for many more years to come.

 

[Raytrace3D]

yeah,

The PCIe slot on provides power via a handful in pins in common connector part. Graphics cards really only use the five +12V pins and at the maximum 75W, that’s 1.25A of current in each connector. To preserve backwards compatibility, no other connectors can be used nor can they be made thicker to cope with more current. Until an entirely new GPU socket comes along, we’ll be stuck with using additional power cables for many more years to come.

Yeah, I hear ya. I wish they would just add power lines on the board via a slot extension for future cards to use that were larger pinned, higher amp capacity lines.

[==================] [ legacy latch] [====] [new latch] <--- new slot added to the rear of the existing slot but to the right of the old PCIe card latch so that the slot is still backwards compatible, but new cards utilize this new pin slot and latch.