PCI SIG Unveils More PCI-Express 3.0 Details

[malware]

Al Yanes, chairman of the PCI Special Interest Group (SIG) shared on Wednesday some additional details of the next generation PCI-Express 3.0 standard. The PCI-E 3.0 specification will almost double the transfer speed of PCI-E 2.0 at 8GT/s (gigatransfers per second). The good news is that PCI-Express 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with PCI Express 2.0. Since the connector will remain the same, the only difference should be in the electrical specifications. The final specs for the PCI-E 3.0 standard are expeted to be completed in late 2009, while testing is set to start in the second half of 2010. First products that will utilize the new slot will start surfacing some time after that.

Source: ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2319727,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532)

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Why bother coming out with this so soon after the release of PCIe 2.0?

[Nyte]

By the way, the effective bandwidth is doubled when going from 5 GT/s to 8 GT/s. This is because PCIe 2.0 uses an 8B/10B encoding scheme which effectively limits the data throughput to 80 % of 5 GT/s (which comes out to 4 GT/s). However, in PCIe 3.0, the 8B/10B encoding scheme has been scrapped and thus the actual data throughput is 8 GT/s (which is double PCIe 2.0).

By the way, PCIe 1.0a/1.1 also used 8B/10B so 2.5 GT/s was actually 2.0 GT/s (and PCIe 2.0 doubles that).

I just wanted to clear that up.

[Mussels]

why bother coming out? so that mobo companies and such can start working on it with a few years headstart.

Same with video card vendors - a GPU design might take 2 years to come out, and it'd be rather nice if they had 3.0 as a standard before they started.

[panchoman]

pointless.. cards hardly use pci 2, if cards even use it yet... pci 3 is great and all..but not needed... should pci sig be working on something more useful like slot compatibility (like being able to put a pci card into a pci x16 slot) or making slot converters or even slot extenders that aren't 500 bucks

[Frogman316]

I think some things are being rushed before their use has been proved empiricly, the thought behind design should be about usability, practability, and stability. If you overengineer anything you get less actual usability and ease of use and limit creative uses that are happenstance. Stability should be applied after emergence of new tech, I am not opposed to new tech or innovation of existing tech, however make what exists better, not trash for a landfill before it literally died.

[Mussels]

well the thing is if its backwards compatible, nothing gets wasted. I have no problems with PCI-E 3.0 coming out right on the hells of 2.0... it just means less upgrade hassle in 3-4 years time for that poor bum with an old PC.

[hat]

hm... does it work with pci-e 1.1?

[Nyte]

hm... does it work with pci-e 1.1?

Yes.