PCI-SIG says PCIe 6.0 is on-track, releases v0.3 spec

The Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) has announced the release, to members, of the PCI Express 6.0 specification in Revision 0.3 form - and claims it is on-track to delivering a final specification by 2021.

Announced back in June this year, before even PCI Express 4.0 had made it to desktops, PCI Express 6.0 continues the standard's impressive performance gains. First released in 2003 following development by Intel, Dell, HP, and IBM, the PCI Express (PCIe) standard promised a faster replacement for the ageing Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus at 2.5 gigatransfers per second (GT/s). PCIe 2.0 doubled this to 5GT/s, PCIe 3.0 increased it yet again to 8GT/s, while PCIe 4.0 - only in the last few months becoming available on mainstream desktop systems - doubled it again to 16GT/s.

The PCI-SIG, the organisations responsible for the PCI Express standard, carries out development of future revisions in parallel. Back in June 2017 the group announced PCI Express 5.0, doubling the available bandwidth yet again to 32GB/s. Even before finalising PCIe 5.0, though, the group was working on PCI 6.0 with yet another doubling of bandwidth to 64GT/s - and in its latest update claims it's still on schedule to finalise the standard in 2021, with the first certified hardware likely to hit the market a year later.

'I’m pleased to share that PCI-SIG continues to make great progress on the development of our next generation of PCIe technology – the PCIe 6.0 specification,' PCI-SIG chair and president Al Yanes states in a status update announcement. 'First announced three months ago during our US Developers Conference in June, our members have fast-tracked development and Revision 0.3 of the specification is now complete and available to PCI-SIG member companies for review and input. This milestone of delivering the 0.3 spec in Oct 2019 validates our projection that we will be able to complete the final specification by 2021.'

While the provisional standard is available now, only PCI-SIG members are able to download it.