PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect, and it is a common connection interface attaching different computer components to a motherboard. It was introduced back in the early 90’s by a group of engineers in Intel, AMD, and other companies. Though it aimed at supporting complex data transfers, in the beginning, it evolved to extend its possibilities beyond that. The PCI bus was available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The technology went through several updates to evolve to PCI Express®, which is under constant development through generations.

PCIe® was initially named as HSI (for High-Speed Interconnect), and later 3GIO (for 3rd Generation I/O) before getting the PCI-SIG name PCI Express®. PCI Express® provides a point-to-point interconnect solution for communication between two devices.

PCIe® Gen1 was introduced in 2003 and supported a transfer rate of 2.5GT/s and a data rate of 250MB/s per lane. With technological improvements, people began looking for higher speed and performance which led to the introduction of PCIe®  Gen 2  with 5.0GT/s per lane transfer speed and doubled the throughput to 500MB/s per lane along with several feature improvements. This version was however backward-compatible with the earlier version.

The third generation of PCIe® was introduced in 2010 as the requirement to handle more complex data demanded enhanced power and speed. This was a revolutionary product with a bit rate of 8GT/s. This was quite enough to transfer a 30GB HD movie in less than a second.

The requirement for speed and accuracy didn't stop there. Artificial intelligence that helps in developing and executing decisions with accuracy far beyond human capabilities and Big Data analysis that computes forecast models at blinding speeds using dedicated GPU from AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, etc. started catching the trend, which led to the introduction of PCIe® 4.0 in 2017. This generation offered improved flexibility, scalability, and lower power with 16GT/s bit rate which was double the bandwidth offered by PCI Express 3.0.

Earlier in 2019, PCIe® introduced its latest version, PCIe® 5.0, with 32GT/s transfer rate. It also has improved signal integrity and is backward-compatible with CEM connectors for add-in cards.

PCI-SIG has already announced the progress of PCI Express 6.0 specification which is expected to launch by early 2021 doubling the data rate to 64GT/s. Amphenol ICC has supported these improvements in developing solutions for each generation and has evolved along. We currently provide PCI Express® Gen 3 Card Edge Connectors, PCIe® M.2 Gen 3 and Gen 4 Card Edge Connectors and PCI Express® Gen 4 and Gen 5 Card Edge Connectors which provides high performance and differential signaling in low profiles. We will continue to introduce more solutions to meet future developments in this technology.

Check out the quick slide summary below.