PCI Express

PCI Express
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
Logo
Logo
Year created2003 (2003)
Created by
Supersedes
Width in bits1 per lane (up to 16 lanes)
No. of devices1 on each endpoint of each connection.[a]
SpeedDual simplex; examples in single-lane (x1) and 16-lane (x16), per direction:
  • Version 1.x: 2.5 GT/s
    • x1: 250 MB/s
    • x16: 4 GB/s
  • Version 2.x: 5 GT/s
    • x1: 500 MB/s
    • x16: 8 GB/s
  • Version 3.x: 8 GT/s
    • x1: 985 MB/s
    • x16: 15.75 GB/s
  • Version 4.0: 16 GT/s
    • x1: 1.97 GB/s
    • x16: 31.5 GB/s
  • Version 5.0: 32 GT/s
    • x1: 3.94 GB/s
    • x16: 63 GB/s
  • Version 6.0: 64 GT/s
    • x1: 7.56 GB/s
    • x16: 121 GB/s
  • Version 7.0: 128 GT/s
    • x1: 15.13 GB/s
    • x16: 242 GB/s
StyleSerial
Hotplugging interfaceYes (with ExpressCard, OCuLink, CFexpress or U.2)
External interfaceYes (with OCuLink or PCI Express External Cabling)
Websitepcisig.com
Two types of PCIe slot on an Asus H81M-K motherboard
Various slots on a computer motherboard, from top to bottom:
  • PCI Express x4
  • PCI Express x16
  • PCI Express x1
  • PCI Express x16
  • Conventional PCI (32-bit, 5 V)

PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e,[1] is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common motherboard interface for personal computers' graphics cards, sound cards, hard disk drive host adapters, SSDs, Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware connections.[2] PCIe has numerous improvements over the older standards, including higher maximum system bus throughput, lower I/O pin count and smaller physical footprint, better performance scaling for bus devices, a more detailed error detection and reporting mechanism (Advanced Error Reporting, AER),[3] and native hot-swap functionality. More recent revisions of the PCIe standard provide hardware support for I/O virtualization.

The PCI Express electrical interface is measured by the number of simultaneous lanes.[4] (A lane is a single send/receive line of data. The analogy is a highway with traffic in both directions.) The interface is also used in a variety of other standards — most notably the laptop expansion card interface called ExpressCard. It is also used in the storage interfaces of SATA Express, U.2 (SFF-8639) and M.2.

Format specifications are maintained and developed by the PCI-SIG (PCI Special Interest Group) — a group of more than 900 companies that also maintains the conventional PCI specifications.


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