PCI Express

Not to be confused with PCI-X or UCIe.
For Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation, see EPCI.

PCI Express
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
Logo
Logo
Year created2003; 21 years ago (2003)
Created by
Supersedes
Width in bits1 per lane[1] (up to 16 lanes)
No. of devices1 on each endpoint of each connection.[a]
SpeedDual simplex, up to 242 GB/s
StyleSerial
Hotplugging interfaceYes (with ExpressCard, OCuLink, CFexpress or U.2)
External interfaceYes (with OCuLink or PCI Express External Cabling)
Websitepcisig.com
Two types of PCIe slot on an Asus H81M-K motherboard
Various slots on a computer motherboard, from top to bottom:
  • PCI Express x4
  • PCI Express x16
  • PCI Express x1
  • PCI Express x16
  • Conventional PCI (32-bit, 5 V)

PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e,[2] is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common motherboard interface for personal computers' graphics cards, capture cards, sound cards, hard disk drive host adapters, SSDs, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet hardware connections.[3] PCIe has numerous improvements over the older standards, including higher maximum system bus throughput, lower I/O pin count and smaller physical footprint, better performance scaling for bus devices, a more detailed error detection and reporting mechanism (Advanced Error Reporting, AER),[4] and native hot-swap functionality. More recent revisions of the PCIe standard provide hardware support for I/O virtualization.

The PCI Express electrical interface is measured by the number of simultaneous lanes.[5] (A lane is a single send/receive line of data, analogous to a "one-lane road" having one lane of traffic in both directions.) The interface is also used in a variety of other standards — most notably the laptop expansion card interface called ExpressCard. It is also used in the storage interfaces of SATA Express, U.2 (SFF-8639) and M.2.

Formal specifications are maintained and developed by the PCI-SIG (PCI Special Interest Group) — a group of more than 900 companies that also maintains the conventional PCI specifications.

  1. ^ IBM Power 770 and 780 Technical Overview and Introduction. IBM Redbooks. 6 June 2013. ISBN 978-0-7384-5121-3.
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