PCIerelated

PCIerelated refers to technologies, standards, and devices associated with the PCI family, most notably PCI Express (PCIe), the serial point-to-point interconnect used in modern computer systems to attach expansion cards and storage devices. The term encompasses motherboard slots, cables, bridges, controllers, and the broader ecosystem of peripherals that rely on PCIe.

Historically, PCI was a parallel bus introduced in the 1990s to connect adapters such as sound and network cards. It was superseded by PCI-X and, more recently, by PCIe, which replaced parallel signaling with high-speed serial links. PCIe uses lanes, and a device can negotiate a link with a certain number of lanes (for example x1, x4, x8, x16). PCIe is not electrically or mechanically compatible with the original PCI; bridging or adapters are required to interface between generations.

Key architectural features include a layered protocol with physical, link, and transaction layers, hot-plug support on many platforms, and optional features such as SR-IOV, which enables a single physical device to appear as multiple virtual devices to virtual machines. PCIe remains widely used for GPUs, NVMe solid-state drives, Ethernet adapters, and other expansion cards in desktops, workstations, servers, and data centers.

Current developments focus on higher bandwidth standards (PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 are common today, with PCIe 6.0 announced by PCI-SIG), improved signaling, and features to support AI accelerators, high-speed storage, and networking. The PCIe ecosystem continues to evolve to meet demands for greater throughput and lower latency.

See also: PCI-SIG, PCI, PCI-X, NVMe.