The PCI Express (PCIe) standard is a high-speed serial interface used to connect peripheral hardware components to a computer’s motherboard. Developed as a successor to older parallel bus standards like PCI and PCI-X, PCIe revolutionized data transfer by using point-to-point serial lanes instead of shared parallel pathways. Each lane consists of two pairs of wires for transmitting and receiving data, enabling faster, more efficient communication. The number of lanes (e.g., x1, x4, x16) scales bandwidth, with x16 commonly used for demanding devices like GPUs.

PCIe evolves through generations (e.g., 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0), each doubling the data transfer rate of its predecessor. For example, PCIe 4.0 offers ~2 GB/s per lane, while PCIe 6.0 (released in 2022) achieves ~8 GB/s per lane using advanced PAM4 encoding. Backward compatibility ensures newer devices work in older slots, albeit at reduced speeds.

The standard supports critical components like GPUs, NVMe SSDs, and network cards, enabling high-performance computing, gaming, and storage. It delivers up to 75W of power through the slot, with auxiliary connectors for power-hungry devices. Governed by the PCI-SIG consortium, PCIe balances speed, scalability, and flexibility, making it the backbone of modern computing. Its efficiency, low latency, and adaptability to emerging technologies (e.g., AI, 5G) ensure its dominance in future hardware ecosystems, outperforming legacy interfaces like SATA and USB.

Tag：PCIe