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

As with previous generations, PCIe 8.0 is designed to double performance once 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 the capacity of PCIe 7.0.

Built for bandwidth-hungry workloads

PCIe is the standard interface for storage, networking, and graphics cards, including GPU accelerators. PCI-SIG says PCIe 8.0 is being shaped for workloads such as AI/ML, high-speed networking, and edge computing in hyperscale data centers.

Al Yanes, PCI-SIG president and chairperson, said the industry continues to need a “cost-effective, high-bandwidth, and low-latency I/O interconnect” as data throughput requirements keep climbing.

What the next generation could mean for storage

In theory, PCIe Gen8 NVMe SSDs could deliver sequential speeds of up to 120,000 MB/s. By comparison, a PCIe 6.0 SSD can reach about 28,000 MB/s sequential read speed. That kind of jump would be a major step forward for storage-heavy environments where latency and bandwidth become bottlenecks.

Signaling, reliability, and efficiency

PCIe 8.0 continues to rely on PAM4 signaling, which first appeared in PCIe 6.0 as a replacement for NRZ. Further refinements to PAM4 are expected to help PCIe 8.0 hit its higher transfer rates.

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

Different adoption paths for clients and servers

On desktops and notebooks, PCIe adoption has mostly settled on PCIe 5, with little pressure to move quickly to PCIe 6. For most client systems, the real benefits are limited.

Servers are a different story. There, maximum throughput matters much more, and technologies like PAM4 are more useful. Upcoming server CPUs such as AMD’s Zen 6-based EPYC processors and Intel’s Diamond Rapids Xeon processors, both expected this year, are projected to support PCIe 6.0. PCIe 7.0 is already complete and waiting for OEM adoption, while PCIe 8.0 is now entering early development.