With the advancement of technology, the performance requirements of computer hardware are also getting higher and higher. Among them, PCI Express (PCIe) is undoubtedly one of the most important expansion bus standards currently. Since the advent of PCIe, it has not only replaced the old PCI and AGP interfaces, but has also become the core interface for various devices such as graphics cards, hard drives, and sound cards in modern computers. People can't help but wonder, what powerful capabilities are hidden behind such a seemingly ordinary technology?
PCIe is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard that offers several advantages, including higher bus throughput, lower I/O pin count, and better performance scalability.
While the traditional PCI bus uses a shared parallel bus architecture, PCIe uses a point-to-point topology, which means each device has an independent serial connection. In this way, PCIe can avoid the delay problems caused by sharing signals in old technologies, and can provide more stable communication when multiple devices transmit data at the same time.
The PCIe interface is measured based on the number of channels. One channel is equivalent to one data transceiver line.
Data exchange between PCIe devices is achieved through logical connections, and each connection is called a link. A link consists of one or more lanes, which allows peripherals of different speeds to share a data stream. For example, graphics adapters typically use a 16-channel link, while slower peripherals such as Wi-Fi cards use a single-channel link.
PCIe's serial bus architecture provides significant performance improvements, especially when processing large amounts of data. Compared with the old parallel bus, PCIe performs better in signal integrity, and because it uses full-duplex data transmission, data can be sent and received between any two endpoints at the same time, greatly improving overall performance.
The PCIe bus can perform better than the PCI-X bus when multiple devices transmit data simultaneously, which makes it a long way to go in applications with high performance requirements such as 3D graphics, network transmission, and enterprise storage.
As demands continue to evolve, M.2, new Mini PCIe and other forms have gradually become popular due to their own characteristics. These new standards expand the application scope of PCIe, allowing more portable devices to enjoy the high performance it provides. The M.2 interface is particularly popular among SSD manufacturers because of its smaller size and higher efficiency.
Although PCIe technology has made significant progress in the past few years, it still faces increasing market competition and technical challenges. How to continuously improve performance, reduce latency and maintain backward compatibility will be a key task that PCIe must face in the future.
As the demand for electronic equipment continues to upgrade, PCIe technology also needs to continue to evolve to meet various challenges that may arise in the future.
In today's digital era, PCI Express, as the core technology of computer hardware, is undoubtedly an important cornerstone to support various high-performance computing needs. With continuous technological innovation, we expect PCIe to bring more possibilities to the future technological revolution. So, how will future PCIe affect our computer experience?