PCI Express 7.0 is INSANE

The video breaks down the upcoming PCI Express 7.0 standard and its implications for home PCs and data centers. It begins by highlighting a potential 2 terabit per second link inside a typical motherboard slot, translating to about 256 GB per second of bandwidth in one direction for an x16 connection, and compares this with PCIe 4.0, which is far slower. The host explains that PCIe 7.0 keeps the same PAM4 signaling scheme introduced with 6.0, which uses four voltage levels to encode data, effectively doubling data per cycle and requiring higher frequencies. The central challenge becomes maintaining signal integrity at these speeds, prompting discussions about improvements in the physical layer, such as better materials, robust PCB construction, or even optical solutions to replace copper in some contexts. The PCI-SIG has already formed an optical workgroup to ensure feasibility of PCIe 7.0 and future revisions, including the possibility of full cables in certain scenarios. The video also touches on the broader goals of PCIe 7.0, notably enabling data center workloads, high bandwidth networking like 800 Gbps Ethernet, and the Compute Express Link ecosystem to support higher RAM capacity and memory-centric applications. Finally, it forecasts market timing, suggesting consumer PCIe 7.0 SSDs and devices may not arrive until the late 2020s, with the immediate impact being more pronounced in data centers and cloud services rather than home rigs. The host closes with a light reminder to like and subscribe and teases a future episode on PCIe 6 for context.

Topics · technology · hardware · computer_science · semiconductors · data_center · networking · ai_infrastructure · pcie