The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) has released the PCIe 7.0 specification, offering a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 512GB per second over a x16 connection. This marks another step in PCIe’s tradition of doubling IO bandwidth approximately every three years.
PCIe 7.0 is designed to meet the growing bandwidth needs of data-intensive sectors such as artificial intelligence, hyperscale data centers, high-performance computing, automotive, and military/aerospace fields.
Consumer devices remain outside the primary target market for PCIe 7.0. The specification focuses on advanced computing environments, with no current plans announced for integration into everyday desktop components like SSDs or GPUs.
This cautious rollout follows a similar pattern with PCIe 5.0, which was introduced in 2019 but only began appearing in consumer hardware around 2021 and remains relatively uncommon.
Looking ahead, PCI-SIG has started development on PCIe 8.0, with the hope that PCIe 6.0 will become standard in consumer products before the next generation is finalized around 2028.