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Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, PCI Express or PCIe for short is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard. To you and me its how our expensive graphics cards and other bits of equipment talk to our CPU. Typically for most users, the main use of a PCIe slot was for our fancy expensive GPU, maybe a network or Wi-Fi card, but nowadays we are getting more and more components that are making use of this standard. From extra USB ports or SATA connections, to blistering fast PCIe SSDs.
| The technology will enable manufacturers to lower the number of lanes per device to achieve performance levels we have today or to take a leap to new levels by utilizing the same number of lanes we use now. In notebooks, we should see greater battery life and an improved user experience. Desktops will get a hefty performance boost, as well. The technology will move us closer to true photo-realistic gaming that will impact both virtual and augmented reality. |
PCIe 4.0 standard is out now, but you will be hard pressed to find any devices that run it or motherboards to support it, now that the specification is set, companies can build compliant products. In recent times we have seen some more mention of PCIe 4.0 via a few product leaks, a couple of retailers had listed that the upcoming Intel Optane SSD 900P was to have PCIe 4.0 connectivity although this is suspected to be an error, an AMD roadmap pins a GPGPU / GPU with the technology in Q4 2018, and Intel has muttered about PCIe 4.0 a time or two, with upcoming chipsets set for release in 2018. All these signs coming together points to PCIe 4.0 being available to the consumer market by next year. Have a read of this Tom's Hardware article if you want a bit more of a technical overview.
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