PCI-SIG® in 2021: A Year in Review

  • Posted on: 14 December 2021
  • By Scott Knowlton and Mihaela Erler, Marketing Work Group Co-Chairs, PCI-SIG

PCI-SIG® built upon our momentum from 2020 with another successful year in 2021. From progress on the PCIe 5.0 architecture compliance program to the impending release of the PCIe 6.0 specification, we have hit many exciting milestones. Read on for the highlights from 2021 and a look toward the next year.

  1. PCI-SIG is nearing completion of the PCIe 6.0 specification with the release of Version 0.71 and Version 0.9 to members in July and October. We expect to announce the final specification early next year, doubling the bandwidth to 64 GT/s while maintaining backwards compatibility with previous generations.
  2. The PCIe 5.0 specification compliance program is in development. PCI-SIG hosted the PCIe 5.0 Preliminary FYI Workshop in February and the PCIe 5.0 FYI Workshop in September. These workshops assist the development of the PCIe 5.0 compliance program and focused primarily on the electrical tests at 32 GT/s. The PCIe 5.0 Compliance Workshop in April 2022 will be the first opportunity for companies to add their PCIe 5.0 technology products to the PCI-SIG Integrators List.
  3. Announced in September, the MOU Agreement between PCI-SIG and the CXL Consortium establishes a framework between the two organizations to ensure consistent joint messaging and marketing across areas of mutual interest. The agreement will increase awareness of industry standard interconnect technologies and provide collaborative and educational messaging. 
  4. Strong member engagement at the PCI-SIG Virtual Developers Conference 2021 and Annual Members Meeting in May. This free annual event for PCI-SIG members included updates from the various PCI-SIG Technical Workgroups (TWGs) and the popular Members Implementation Experiences speaking track. Congratulations to the US DevCon 2021 Chairperson’s Award winners Manisha Nilange and Mohiuddin Mazumder of Intel. Members can view the presentation recordings on-demand on Causeway.
  5. PCI-SIG members presented in-person and virtually at industry events. In August, Arif Khan and Thomas Wong of Cadence presented at the Drive World Conference in Santa Clara, CA. In November, PCI-SIG Vice President Richard Solomon and Board Member Debendra Das Sharma hosted a hybrid Birds of a Feather Session on the PCIe 6.0 specification at SC21 in St. Louis, MO. Mohiuddin Mazumder of Intel presented at the virtual Storage Developers Conference in September and Debendra Das Sharma and Gerry Talbot of AMD presented at the virtual Design Automation Conference (DAC) in December. In addition, the PCI-SIG virtual booth was part of the Industry Enabling Zone at the virtual Intel Innovation event in September.  
  6. PCI-SIG held the first in-person compliance workshop since 2019. We had a great turnout for Compliance Workshop #117 in July at the Embassy Suites Burlingame in Burlingame, CA. Watch the video for an overview of the activities that takes place at a PCI-SIG compliance workshop.
  7. We hosted educational webinars on a variety of topics, including an overview of PCIe technology in automotive applications, PCIe technology for automotive functional safety, PCIe technology in IoT, and PCIe technology for long and short reach in automotive applications. You can register for upcoming webinars and watch previous talks on-demand on the PCI-SIG BrightTALK channel.
  8. As part of the effort to broaden the adoption and deployment of PCIe technology in the automotive industry vertical, PCI-SIG introduced the new Automotive Taskforce. The taskforce is now an official PCI-SIG workgroup chaired by Debendra Das Sharma of Intel and Steve Glaser of NVIDIA.

We appreciate the hard work of the Technical Working Groups on the PCIe 6.0 specification and look forward to the final release to our members early next year. We anticipate another great year in 2022 and continuing our progress to advance industry awareness of PCIe technology.