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1, 2, 3, 4, 5… It’s Official, PCIe 5.0 is Announced

Posted by on August 15, 2017

At the PCI-SIG DevCon in June 2017 two announcements were made with regards to PCI Express specifications. The first is that the specification for PCIe 4.0 is now at version 0.9. The second and even more interesting announcement was of the new PCI Express 5.0 specification at the initial 0.3 version. With the PCI Express 5.0 announcement, the industry gets another doubling of speed from 16.0GT/s to 32GT/s per lane providing a bandwidth for a x16 (16 lanes) at about 128GB/s. The chart below provides a comparison for the different generations of PCIe rates and bandwidth.

PCIe Generation Comparison
PCIe Generation Comparison

The intent with the new PCIe 5.0 specification is to minimalize the changes to enable the specification to proceed quickly through the specification process. In fact, the schedule being driven into the working groups is very aggressive, especially if you compare to what we seen for the releases of the PCIe 4.0 specification. The initial 0.3 version of the PCIe 5.0 specification confirms the intent for minimal changes in features, so most of the work to update the controller will be to support the double data rates.

Synopsys has a long history of providing several PCIe IP “firsts” enabling our customers to develop SoCs with the latest (and I’d say best) PCIe interfaces to meet their aggressive rollouts while utilizing the latest PCIe technology. Beginning with the first day of the conference, on June 7, 2017, Synopsys was showcasing our support for PCIe 5.0 in our booth. In case you were not able to come to the show, you can see the video that we recorded of the First Demonstration of PCI Express 5.0 at 32GT/s.

 

Users of the Synopsys DesignWare Controller IP for PCIe 5.0 can leverage our coreConsultant interface to easily change the configurations of their PCI Express interface to evaluate tradeoffs between performance and costs. This architectural exploration can be performed at your desk without the need for changes from a far off factory. A video showcasing the benefits as presented by Richard is shown below. Of course, this is PCIe 4.0, but PCIe 5.0 is just an extension of this process and behaves the same way.

 

Of course, this is the first version of the specification and there are always developments and challenges that add to the schedule and release of the new specification and products associated with it. Some things that come to mind:

  • At 32GT/s, what is the new channel going to be?
  • What changes will be required for the connector to support 32G?
  • Will the PIPE I/F change? Of course, the PIPE specification isn’t a PCI-SIG specification, but for those of us providing or using IP, PIPE is an important specification to connect PHYs with Controllers. Whatever changes come with the PCIe 5.0 specification, we look forward to being on the journey with you.

Richard and I always appreciate your support and it would be great to have you join our blog, which you can do by clicking here to subscribe.

Regards,

Scott

 

 

This post is filed under Architecture, General Protocol, Market Adoption, PCI Express, PCI-SIG, Specification.
 
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About
This blog is all about PCI Express: the wonderful ways that it enhances the products around you, the challenges designers face in implementation, and how the specification is evolving to make PCIe Express an even more useful protocol. I'll also examine how the other specifications, such as NVM Express, SATA Express and SCSI-Over-PCI Express (SOP) are leveraging PCI Express. If there is a topic that is of interest to you, feel free to "Express Yourself" by offering your insights on this blog.
About the Author
Scott Knowlton
I started out my career as a chip designer in a variety of industries and it’s likely that a few, of the more than 30 designs I’ve been responsible for, are still floating around somewhere in outer space. My IP career started at Synopsys in 1997 and over the last 15 years, I have seen tremendous changes in the semiconductor industry’s perception and adoption of IP. I started working on PCI Express in 2003 when Synopsys was getting ready to launch our first PCI Express IP solution. Since then, I have been managing the DesignWare PCI Express IP product line through all of the changes in the specification and the industry as it moves towards becoming the de-facto interconnect standard. I received a B.S.E.E from the University of Michigan (M Go Blue!), am an avid red wine drinker (love California reds) and use English as a second language when my fluency in sarcasm just doesn’t get the job done.

Richard Solomon

I’ve been involved in the development of PCI chips dating back to the NCR 53C810 and pre-1.0 versions of the PCI spec so have definitely lived the evolution of PCI Express and PCI since the very beginning! Over the years I have worked on variations of PCI, eventually moving on to architecting and leading the development of the PCI Express and PCI-X interface cores used in LSI’s line of storage RAID controller chips. For the last ten plus years I've also had the honor of serving on the PCI-SIG Board of Directors and holding a variety of officer positions. I am still involved in PCI-SIG workgroups and I present at many PCI-SIG events around the world. Back before the dawn of PCI, I received my B.S.E.E. from Rice University, and hold over two dozen U.S. Patents, many of which relate to PCI technology.