This article was reprinted with permission from Superpower.com.
From the HD 7000 series graphics cards in 2011, PCI-E 3.0 graphics cards have been popular for seven years. The PCI-E 4.0 standard was announced early. The next generation of PCI-E 5.0 is in progress. Up to 16GT/s, 32GT/s, twice the current, four times, very good and powerful. However, PCI-E 4.0 is still far away from the popularity. The fundamental reason for its impact is that the cost is too high. For as much as $100, manufacturers can't afford it.
An article on EETimes Weekend mentioned the issue of PCI-E 4.0 and PCI-E 5.0. The PCI-E 5.0 standard is expected to be approved next year, and the transmission speed will be increased to 32GT/s. This is less than two years after the PCI-E 4.0 standard at a speed of 16GT/s.
The highest demand for high-bandwidth PCI-E is in the cloud computing market. Every three to four years, the data transmission rate needs to be doubled. The data center network needs a faster speed to reach 400Gbe, and more and more deep learning machines are also Need high speed.
However, the cost of high-bandwidth PCI-E is getting higher and higher, because the faster the speed, the shorter the transmission distance. PCI-E 1.0 has a 20-inch signal transmission distance on mainstream FR4 motherboards. PCI-E 4.0 does not use any connection. Each further signal may be attenuated, which requires the manufacturer to use better materials to ensure the signal.
The original quoted the expert's analysis and calculated an account -The full 16-lane PCI-E 4.0 retimer chip requires $15-25, and the adapter upgrade from Megtron-2 to Megtron-4 may increase the cost by $1, but similar upgrades to the motherboard require $100, if you upgrade to more The high quality Megtron-6 costs 300 dollars.
If it is more advanced PCI-E 5.0, then the cost of the chip will rise.
It can also be seen from here that in the past two years since the advent of PCI-E 4.0, in addition to the enterprise market, the root cause of the consumer market's complete lack of movement is that the cost is too high, and that consumer-grade graphics cards, processors, and networks have become faster. Times of PCI-E 4.0 have no need.
This problem was tested as early as PCI-E 3.0, and even if the graphics card is using PCI-E 2.0 x16, the performance will not be significantly lost.
