PCIe 2.0 aims to offer twice as much bandwidth

WE'VE SEEN SOME PCIe 1.1 specifications in the wild but we wanted to sniff around to see what is going on with the PCIe 2.0 specification. PCIe 1.1 is a minor improvement but the 2.0 should offer plenty more than the current PCI 1.0 specification.

PCIe 2.0 will provide faster signalling which doubles the bit rate from 2.5GT/s to 5GT/s. It simply means more bandwidth. Maybe someone could tell us what GT/s stands for.

Currently the PCIe base specification release candidate version 0.9 is available and the final one is expected shortly. It won't come to life till 2007 but there is only a handful days left. The v0.7 of the PCIe 2.0 Card Electromechanical (CEM) specification is supposed to be out in Q4 2006 and we are at very end of that quarter.

The graphic boys wanted even more bandwidth for their high-end cards and the PCI SIG is trying to meet the demands. In theory it will be faster but we are not sure what will happen in the real world, probably not much. PCIe 16X vs. 8X is not a big difference after all. µ