During the PCI-SIG® US DevCon 2022, the PCI-SIG Board of Directors surprised two individuals for their years of service and contributions to the development and expansion of PCI Express® (PCIe®) technology. Congratulations to PCI-SIG Board Member Dr. Debendra Das Sharma of Intel, recipient of the DevCon 2022 Chairperson’s Award. PCI-SIG Vice President Richard Solomon of Synopsys was also recognized and will be featured in a separate blog. In the following interview, Dr. Das Sharma discusses the significance of this award and the impacts of PCIe technology over six generations.

What does this award mean to you?

The award is a recognition of the hard work and innovation done by the team to deliver PCIe 6.0 specification. PCIe 6.0 architecture is one of the most innovative technologies I have worked in. I happen to be leading that team. Receiving this award is the recognition of the entire team not an individual, in my opinion.

What are your proudest achievements related to PCIe technology in the past year?

Delivering PCIe 6.0 specification! We doubled the bandwidth while reducing latency, improved bandwidth efficiency and kept the channel length constant. Most importantly, we achieved better power efficiency while being fully backward compatible. Other standards had paid 100+ns latency penalty while deploying a forward error correction mechanism to go along with PAM4 signaling. We managed to buck that trend. We did that through innovations and excellent teamwork across all companies. That is the proudest achievement for me.

What has been the most fulfilling aspect of being a part of PCI-SIG for you?

Driving six generations of PCIe specifications, spanning three decades with full backward compatibility and industry-leading area, cost, power and performance metrics. We are now beginning work on our seventh generation. This far exceeds the metrics of success over three generations of backwards compatible evolution over a decade.

What do you feel is the impact of PCI-SIG and PCIe technology in the industry?

The biggest impact is evolving as the ubiquitous interconnect across the entire compute continuum. We have successfully navigated the evolution and revolution in the compute infrastructure over the past thirty years.

Where do you see PCIe technology progressing in the next year?

We are making solid progress towards PCIe 7.0 specification and also evolving PCIe technology towards being a more fabric like interconnect with peer-to-peer communications.

Where can I review additional conversations with Chairperson’s Award winners?

You can read the conversation with previous Chairperson’s Award winner David Harriman of Intel.

Interested in PCI-SIG DevCon Materials?

PCI-SIG DevCon 2022 presentation recordings and slides are available on demand for members to view on Causeway.