PCI Express 3.0 Specifications

PCI-SIG, the identity behind PCIe regulations and specifications, has announced PCI Express Base 3.0. In a nutshell, the new architecture will double the data transfer rate over previous version, PCI Express 2.0. This is a good news for games lovers and CUDA programmers as it’s been almost two years since PCI Express 2.0 specifications were announced. The new base is capable of giving a theoretical 32 GB/s transfer rate as compared to previously maximum 16 GB/s.

History suggest that every major architectural improvement has doubled the data transfer rate (bandwidth) of PCI Express slot. Nvidia will benefit the most of it as the only bottleneck in their flagship technology, CUDA, was limited bandwidth between host and graphic card. This, indeed, was the high time for PCI Express (after USB) to get upgraded. While giving the performance boast, the PCI Express 3.0 technology also maintains a backward compatibility with previous architectures. A mortarboard having PCIe 3.0 will also support device having PCIe 2.0 or previous. For more information, visit PCI-SIG