PCI Express bus speed to double

A new PCI Express bus will offer double the data rate of the current design within two years, Intel says. The PCI Express ll (PCIe II) bus will be backward compatible with PCIe devices but will be capable of performing up to 5GT/sec. (Throughput of these buses is measured in gigatransfers per second because the bit transfer rate depends on the number of channels. Thus a 16-channel PCI Express bus has the same GT rate as a one-channel, but can pass 16 times as much data).

A single PCI Express channel can pass 2.5Gbits/sec in each direction under the current standard. The PCI Express ll bus will always start in PCI Express I mode for the benefit of older cards and negotiate with newer cards to allow a high speed.

Hardware or software will be able to limit the maximum speed, either to save power or to keep pace with other processing events.

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