Yes, the specifications PCI Express 7.0 it has already been introduced, so future chip designers will be able to use it. The seventh generation of PCIe arrives when there are not even products that use the fifth. Also, we don’t currently know which processors from Intel and AMD will support PCI Express 6.0 at this time. So there are still many years to go before we see products with PCIe Gen 7. However, what interests us are the specs and how that might change the way we understand our PC hardware.
There is no doubt that PCI Express is the longest parallel interface, with the ability to send and receive multiple bits at the same time, in the history of computer hardware and its life will be long with the appearance of the version 7.0. What has just been presented by PCI-SIG, the consortium of companies in charge of agreeing on the specifications of the different versions of PCI Express. In such a way that there is total compatibility not only between the different components and power supplies that use this interface to communicate with each other.
What does PCI Express 7.0 bring us?
The seventh generation of the PCI Express standard will continue the tradition of doubling the bandwidth compared to the previous one. In this case, you will be able to access the 512 GB/s of bandwidth transmitting data in both directions in an x16 configuration, typical of a graphics card. At first sight it is a Evolution of PCI Express 6.0 and just like that will use PAM4 encoding. This is that instead of encoding a 0 or 1 value for each send pin, they can encode the values 00, 01, 10 and 11. This means that the bandwidth can be doubled without increasing the speed of clock through simple voltage variants. However, as with Gen 6, so does Gen 7 keep backward compatibility with earlier versions of the standard.
We must proceed from the fact that, as happens with memory interfaces, the peripheral interfaces are located on the perimeter of the chip and, therefore, in the outermost part of it. It is important that the specifications are available several years in advance so that they can be built and the various manufacturers can implement them in their designs. There are still three years left before we see the first PCI Express 7.0 interfaces integrated into the chips that our PCs will mount. So for now it’s still a promise on paper.
Why might this change the way we know PCs?
One of the expansions of the PCI Express 5.0 standard that will be implemented in future expansions is the so-called Compute Express Link. This allows all PCI Express devices to share the same addressing in terms of memory. In a simplified way, this means that in the future we will be able to expand the RAM memory of our PC from the PCIe slots, which will make the classic DIMM slots completely useless. Plus, with bandwidths of 256 GB/s and 512 GB/s, that’ll be more than enough for most computers.
So at some point we might see a new memory standard that uses PCIe ports, we might even see RAM expansion modules in M.2 format like in NVMe SSDs. Either way, the next safe step is to unify SSD and RAM addressing. In addition to taking the flash controller inside the processor, as happened with RAM memory at the time. Ultimately, they’re two very similar pieces, and the high speeds of PCI Express 7.0 might make that transition easier.
