PCI Express 7.0 Remains On Track For 2025, v0.7 Spec Published

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PCI Express 7.0 Remains On Track For 2025, v0.7 Spec Published

Back in 2022 the PCI Express 7.0 specification was announced with hitting 128 GT/s and planned availability in 2025. Since then they have been iterating on the spec with PCI-SIG members and today they announced the PCI Express 7.0 v0.7 specification...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/PCI-Express-7.0-v0.7-Spec

[CommunityMember]

v0.7 is a significant milestone, as in the PCIe standards process, v0.7 means a "complete draft", with all functional requirements complete, and actual test silicon validation being complete. I expect a number of vendors will have their latest PCIe 7.0 story to tell at DesignCon 2025 (whose tagline is "Where the chip meets the board") later this month.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

At that point I'd be happy with motherboards with a bunch of PCIe / M.2 7.0 x1 slots and appropriate hardware to shove in them. I'm hoping we start seeing more hybrid controller designs for PCIe devices (e.g. could run at 5.0 x4 or 6.0 x2). We aren't going to get a shitload more lanes on consumer motherboards. But we could have more super fast devices using fewer lanes each.

[caligula]

PCie version 7.0 version 0.7. Oh dear lord. Why not 7.7 or 7.7.0 or 7.0.7?

[anarki2]

Cool, but first, I'd be happy with a PCI-E 5.0 SSD that doesn't throttle all the time without active cooling.

[dlq84]

PCie version 7.0 version 0.7. Oh dear lord. Why not 7.7 or 7.7.0 or 7.0.7?

It's draft version 0.7. It has nothing to do with the version of PCIe itself.

Cool, but first, I'd be happy with a PCI-E 5.0 SSD that doesn't throttle all the time without active cooling.

It's not the same working group creating the memory and controller chips... Anyway, you won't see PCIe 6 or 7 in consumer hardware anytime soon. PAM4 is more complex and expensive and GPUs can barely saturate 16x PCIe 4.0 anyway, not really worth it. But in data centers this is great.

[Guiorgy]

PCie version 7.0 version 0.7. Oh dear lord. Why not 7.7 or 7.7.0 or 7.0.7?

It's not 7.7, its PCIe 7.0 Draft 0.7, where 7.0 is the PCIe version and 0.7 is just the draft version. Think of it as alpha 0.7. Though 7.0 has been announced it's not yet been finalized, when it's fully out it will be just PCIe 7.0

Cool, but first, I'd be happy with a PCI-E 5.0 SSD that doesn't throttle all the time without active cooling.

PCIe and similar technologies are create first and foremost for servers and HPCs. I mean, 6.0 has been fully out for some time, but we are yet to see them come to the "normal" people. And besides, even if we don't get SSDs that can saturate four lanes of PCIe 7.0, it would still be useful to have faster lanes, since desktop PCs, and especially laptop/embedded have limited number of lanes, it allows the use of more devices with fewer lanes, e.g. 1xPCIe 7.0 has the same speed that a full NVMe 4xPCIe 5.0 connection, in other words you can have 4 times the SSDs at the same speed with the same number of PCIe lanes. Personally I think this is more important since current SSDs are plenty fast, especially on embedded CPUs used in things like low end NAS.

[caligula]

It's not 7.7, its PCIe 7.0 Draft 0.7, where 7.0 is the PCIe version and 0.7 is just the draft version. Think of it as alpha 0.7. Though 7.0 has been announced it's not yet been finalized, when it's fully out it will be just PCIe 7.0

Why does the PCIe version numbering even have the latter part? PCIe 7 would be enough.

[richardnpaul]

Why does the PCIe version numbering even have the latter part? PCIe 7 would be enough.

A quick search on Wikipedia would inform you as to why

[Gamer1227]

Why does the PCIe version numbering even have the latter part? PCIe 7 would be enough.

It is a draft version, consumers never see those draft versions anyway. Phoronix users are quite the amusement.