PCIe 6.0 Specification To Be Released By 2021


Even though Intel’s processors still only support PCIe 3.0, and AMD’s latest Zen 2 processors support PCIe 4.0, PCI-SIG, the consortium that designs the PCIe specification, has announced that it has reached version 0.3 for the PCIe 6.0 specification. The design of the new specification started three months ago.

According to PCI-SIG, the final specification should be ready by 2021, so we may be looking at products adopting it sometime in 2022-2023. In comparison, the group released the final PCIe 4.0 specification in October of 2017, and we saw the first products shipping with support for it this year, or two years later. 

If we extrapolate, then we should expect the PCIe 6.0 specification to appear in the first products no earlier than the end of 2022 -- unless some manufacturers go ahead with the implementation of a non-final revision of the specification. 

TOPICS
Contributor

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.

  • hannibal
    Nice... the stagnaation of pci line spesifications seems to be over! New version comes at steady pace. Now we just need product that can fullfill that bandwide!
    Reply
  • KidHorn
    128 GB/s. yea sure. I'll believe it when it actually happens.
    Reply
  • setx
    It will happen. But it will be obviously not cheap and very power-hungry.
    Probably targeted at datacenters, not the consumer devices.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    setx said:
    It will happen. But it will be obviously not cheap and very power-hungry.
    Probably targeted at datacenters, not the consumer devices.
    I totally agree, except I think it could also see use for intra-package communication between chiplets, such as GPUs and AI accelerators, in consumer products.

    I don't imagine consumer PCs growing beyond PCIe 4.0, for the foreseeable future.
    Reply