This year the PCIe 7.0 standard will be adopted – four times faster than PCIe 5.0, but SSDs will have to wait with it

The PCI-SIG organization has published version 0.7 of the PCIe 7.0 standard – the final version will be presented before the end of the year. PCI Express 7.0 will provide four times the speed of PCI Express 5.0, which is used on today’s leading PCs.

Image source: PCI-SIG

The new version of the standard will allow the production of faster SSDs, more powerful artificial intelligence accelerators and video cards. The final PCIe 7.0 specifications are due to be published in 2025, but some things are already known:

• Data transfer speed of 128 GT/s and up to 512 GB/s in both directions with x16 configuration;
• Application of a pulse amplitude modulation circuit with four signal levels (PAM4);
• Emphasis on channel parameters and coverage area;
• Ensuring low latency and high reliability;
• Increasing energy efficiency;
• Maintaining backward compatibility with all previous PCIe variants.

PCI-SIG aims to double PCIe throughput every three years—in version seven, the organization expects to reach 512 GB/s three years ahead of schedule. Thus, the PCIe 7.0 x2 configuration will achieve the same speeds as PCIe 4.0 x16, and this allows for SSDs with sequential read speeds of more than 50 GB/s. High-speed networks will also become more common: PCI-SIG notes that the new PCIe standard will be useful for organizing AI systems, hyperscalers, quantum computing and much more.

Today, high-performance PCs make do with the PCIe 5.0 bus, but manufacturers have not yet begun to master the PCIe 6.0 standard. The question arises: why do we need PCIe 7.0? The new standard will help manufacturers avoid spending money on their own solutions if they need to increase throughput. PCIe will remain relevant in the future, provide backward compatibility and prevent fragmentation of the PC and computing market. Devices with PCIe 7.0 support will probably appear on the market in 2027–2028. Next in line will be the PCIe 8.0 standard, which in the x16 configuration will provide speeds of up to 1 TB/s.