PCI-SIG has started drafting PCIe 8.0, the next major revision of the PCI Express standard, even though PCIe 7.0 products have not yet reached the market. If development stays on track, the final PCIe 8.0 specification is expected in 2028.

As with previous generations, PCIe 8.0 is set to double performance again. The draft targets a 256 GT/s data rate and up to 1 TB/s of raw bi-directional bandwidth in a 16-lane configuration, which is twice what PCIe 7.0 offers.

Built for bandwidth-heavy workloads

PCIe remains the backbone interface for graphics cards, network adapters, and storage devices, including GPU accelerators. PCI-SIG says the new standard is being shaped around AI/ML, high-speed networking, edge computing, and other workloads running in hyperscale data centers.

Al Yanes, PCI-SIG president and chairperson, said the industry still needs a “cost-effective, high-bandwidth, and low-latency I/O interconnect” as data throughput demands keep rising.

What the next generation could mean for storage

In theory, PCIe Gen8 NVMe SSDs could reach sequential speeds of up to 120,000 MB/s. By comparison, PCIe 6.0 SSDs top out at around 28,000 MB/s sequential read speed. That kind of jump would matter for data-heavy environments where storage latency and throughput can become bottlenecks.

Signaling, reliability, and efficiency

PCIe 8.0 continues to build on PAM4 signaling, which was introduced with PCIe 6.0. Further refinements to that signaling method are expected to help the new standard reach its higher transfer rates.

PCI-SIG says its work has also focused on connector design, latency reduction, forward error correction, reliability, protocol-level bandwidth optimization, and lower power consumption. Backward compatibility with earlier PCIe generations remains a top priority.

Different adoption paths for clients and servers

Desktop and notebook systems have mostly settled on PCIe 5, and there has been little pressure to move to PCIe 6 on the client side. For most consumer systems, the benefits are not large enough to justify rapid adoption.

Servers are a different story. Maximum throughput matters much more there, and technologies like PAM4 have more obvious value. Upcoming server CPUs, including AMD’s Zen 6-based EPYC processors and Intel’s Diamond Rapids Xeon chips, are expected to support PCIe 6.0. PCIe 7.0 is already finished and waiting for OEM adoption, while PCIe 8.0 is now moving into early development.