PCIe 4.0 to arrive 2014-2015, brings 16GT/s speeds

PCI-SIG says PCIe 4.0 will arrive sometime around 2014-2015.

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PCIe 3.0 is barely here and rumblings of PCIe 4.0 is coming through the cracks of the Internet tubes. PCI-SIG, who are responsible for developing the PCI Express spec, have listed some preliminary details about PCIe 4.0.

PCIe 4.0 to arrive 2014-2015, brings 16GT/s speeds | TweakTown.com

PCI-SIG says that they've decided on a transfer rate of 16GT/sec for the next-generation PCIe technology, with a study showing that 16GT/sec can be achieved over copper wires, at roughly the same power levels of PCIe 3.0, using chips fabbed with "mainstream silicon process technology".

PCIe 4.0 will be backward compatible with older PCIe devices, and vica versa. PCI-SIG haven't mentioned which encoding scheme the new standard will use, so assuming it uses the same 128b/130b system as PCIe 3.0, a 16GT/sec peak transfer rate would translate into per-late, per-direction bandwitch of just under 2GB/sec, a two-fold increase over the PCIe 3.0 standard, and nearly four times as fast as PCIe 2.0. We'd be looking at 31.5GB/sec per direction for a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot.

PCI-SIG have also hinted at reducing power consumption and keeping costs down. They say they plan to "investigate advancements in active and idle power optimizations" with PCIe 4.0. PCI-SIG also expect PCIe 4.0 to "address the many applications pushing for increased bandwidth at a low cost," including desktops, notebooks, and tablets.

We won't see PCIe 4.0 until 2014-2015, but how will high-end GPUs be by then? Will games have caught up? Will we require 31.5GB/sec of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth? Time will tell.

NEWS SOURCE:techreport.com

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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