I am excited to report that PCI-SIG has released PCIe 6.0 specification, version 0.9 to our members. This is a major milestone in our continued effort to double the data rate of the PCI Express® specifications while maintaining backwards compatibility. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the technical members of our protocol and electrical workgroups, we were able to reach this achievement two years after we announced the PCIe 6.0 specification in June 2019. The PCIe 6.0 specification, version 0.9 is the final draft of the specification wherein members perform internal reviews of the technology for their essential patents. No additional functional changes are expected during this time.

The PCIe 6.0 specification features include:

• 64 GT/s data rate and up to 256 GB/s via x16 configuration, doubling the bandwidth of the PCIe 5.0 specification
• PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels) encoding and leverages existing 56G PAM-4 in the industry
• FLIT (flow control unit)-based encoding
• Low-latency Forward Error Correction (FEC) with additional mechanisms to improve bandwidth efficiency
• Backwards compatibility with all previous generations of PCIe technology

Explore PCIe 6.0 Technology Resources

The PCI-SIG website features a wealth of educational resources to learn more about PCIe technology. PCI-SIG Board Member Debendra Das Sharma presented the webinar, “PCIe 6.0 Specification: The Interconnect for I/O Needs of the Future,” which provided a deep dive into how the increasing demand for additional performance in data-hungry server, client, embedded, cloud and edge segments is driving the quick transition to PCIe 6.0 technology. We published five separate blog posts based on questions from the webinar on topics like PAM-4 Signaling, L0p, Forward Error Correction (FEC), FLIT Mode and additional supported features. Subscribe to the PCI-SIG BrightTALK channel for alerts about upcoming webinars.

I also encourage you to follow PCI-SIG on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube for frequent news and updates about PCI Express technology. I look forward to sharing news of the PCIe 6.0 specification release later this year.