The PCI Express arrives

A new motherboard technology, code-named “3GIO” (for “3rd generation I/O”) is readying for release. When it debuts it will be called PCI Express. The main benifit of PCI Express is it’s increased bandwidth. Where AGP 8x leaves off PCI Express will pickup, with throughputs, respectively, 2.1GB/s and 8GB/s. PCI Express architecture is based on a serial bus which can be scaled to higher speeds with fewer wires. Existing parallel bus architecture are more complex in engineering and are therefore more expensive. They also are at their limits with speed. It looks as if the motherboards of the future will be moving to this serial bus ideaology in order to keep up with our needs for faster systems. We should see the first of this technology towards the end of this year (2003). Intel and Microsoft have looked at PCI Express and have a fews plans for it, read on.