By Richard Solomon, PCI-SIG Vice President and Developers Conference Chair

From Israel to Europe and Japan to Taiwan, the PCI-SIG® Israel, Europe and APAC 2019 Developers Conference tour has come to an end for the year. PCI Express® (PCIe®) technology has taken me around the world and back, and the jet lag was worth it. Now that I’ve finally unpacked, I’m thrilled to report the successes of these DevCons.

These international events gave our 800+ member companies the opportunity to learn the latest developments of PCI Express specifications—ranging from information on compliance updates to protocol debugging techniques, all the way up protocol updates on the PCIe 5.0 specification and the latest developments for the PCIe 6.0 specification.

The DevCon in Taipei, Taiwan also included a face-to-face Marketing Work Group (MWG) meeting with attendees from regional and U.S.-based member companies.

Normally I’d be glad to regale everyone with stories of my adventures abroad, but for now, here are some of the highlights from the four events:

Israel and Europe DevCons: Tel Aviv and Amsterdam

The events in Tel Aviv and Amsterdam kicked off an exciting journey for PCI Express technology and PCI-SIG. Over fifty different PCI-SIG member companies were represented at these DevCons and most attendees were regionally based.

One of my favorite parts of these international PCI-SIG Developers Conferences is engaging with local developers and learning how PCIe specifications are leveraged in different regional markets and through various use cases.

APAC DevCons: Tokyo and Taipei

The Tokyo and Taipei DevCons were also largely successful with a record 455 attendees at our Taipei DevCon—making it the largest PCI-SIG event in the region thus far.

We also hosted a face-to-face Marketing Work Group meeting in Taipei with regional contacts in the area. Since over 40% of our members are based in the Taipei area, we are working hard to ensure that they have the right tools and knowledge to effectively promote the benefits of their PCIe technology products.

Finally, we want to thank our event sponsors for their contributions: Anritsu, Cadence, Granite River Labs, Keysight Technologies, Mentor Graphics, Mobiveil, PLDA, Rohde & Schwarz, Samtec, Synopsys, Tektronix, Teledyne LeCroy and Viavi. Thank you all for helping PCI-SIG bring this event to APAC and allowing our regional member companies the opportunity to interact with PCIe technology enabled products.

It’s been quite a year for PCI-SIG and we’re finishing off strong with next month’s PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop #112 in Burlingame, CA. This workshop is another excellent opportunity for our members to test their products for compliance and interoperability against PCI Express specifications. Member products that pass these tests are added to the PCI-SIG Integrator’s List which is referenced by end users and vendors for quality assurance when making company-to-company purchases. The PCIe 4.0 Integrator’s List already has over 40 entries and we expect that list to continue growing as our members expand the PCI Express 4.0 ecosystem with their technology.

Attending these events and workshops is just one of the PCI-SIG member benefits (Hint, hint). I encourage you to learn about all of the advantages of membership here and consider joining PCI-SIG today.

Thanks again to our attendees for making these international DevCons such a success. We will be back for many more exciting DevCons in 2020.