PCI-SIG today announced that PCI Express (PCIe ) 6.0 technology will double the data rate to 64 GT/s while maintaining backwards compatibility with previous generations and delivering power efficiency and cost-effective performance. The PCIe 6.0 specification is actively targeted for release in 2021.

PCIe 6.0 Specification FeaturesDelivers 64 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 256 GB/s via x16 configurationUtilizes PAM-4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels) encoding and leverages existing 56G PAM-4 in the industryIncludes low-latency Forward Error Correction (FEC) with additional mechanisms to improve bandwidth efficiencyMaintains backwards compatibility with all previous generations of PCIe technology