Possible PCIe successor Gen-Z Reaches Version 1.0 Development Stage
A consortium of multiple (and many) technology companies have released Gen-Z Core Specification revision 1.0, the new standard has the potential and will to replace PCI-Express. It would be able to transfer hundreds of gigabytes per second, per device. The new Gen-Z would be an open and royalty-free standard.
Before we start, many companies are taking part in this project, including some very big names. Pretty much the entire industry that has any relevance is listed, but two big names are missing, being Intel and Nvidia. Originally founded AMD, ARM, Broadcom, Cray, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IDT, Micron, Samsung, SK hynix, and Xilinx they aim to create the next generation interconnect. Currently, over 50 companies have joined up and are listed.
Much like the PCIe interface, Gen-Z is an interconnect, a way of allowing your computer components to 'talk' to each over what you might call a data-highway. E.g. A GPU or SSD to your chipset or CPU. While PCIe express 4.0 as a standard is already finished (doubles up the bandwidth over PCIe Gen 3.0), the Gen-Z consortium feels that the development rate for PCIe simply is too slow. Next to that, in this day and age workloads, have changed if you think about AI, big data, and anything HPC. PCI-Express also is limited as a point to point connection, whereas Gen-Z likely could bypass that, perhaps even talk to memory. All Gen-Z components will make use of the same connector and benefit from the standard low latency and high bandwidth.
The standard is now ready, now it's up to the industry to develop products utilizing Gen-Z, and that might actually be the biggest challenge. More information can be found at the Gen-Z website.
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Senior Member
Posts: 2797
Joined: 2006-02-23
I like anything that pushes technology it can only help improve desktop PC's in the long run. Would be nice if all PCIE connectors were all 16x we might not need it but if hardware suppliers
new they can access that maybe they will produce faster and better hardware....... or maybe not
Senior Member
Posts: 11808
Joined: 2012-07-20
No Intel = No consumer products
Do we need more than what PCIe can deliver currently?
Looks like there are a few big scale computing companies in there though so might be something for the datacentre/supercomputer crowd maybe?
Yes, we need more. Once we get PCIe 5.0, bandwidth will be good enough for you to buy APU system, and add another APU into PCIe slot as add-in-card.
Imagine buying 4C/8T APU with 2048SP, and then as time passes, you would add few 4C/8T APUs with 2048SP GPU each. One may need 140W CPU socket, but if one considers year at which we'll have PCIe 5.0 ... Maybe those will be just 95W APUs, and 95W Add-In-Cards.
With great PCIe bandwidth, it may be just question of time till we see secondary system memory. IIRC there are already few projects.
Maybe even GPUs using HSA memory in another slot. And that slot may be hosting RAM + SSD as large cache.
Senior Member
Posts: 434
Joined: 2013-08-09
I don't believe I've ever heard of Gen-Z. However it sounds like a great idea, and if it works royalty free, then that's a win-win. Because the savings will be passed on the the OEMs & consumers, hopefully lowering the cost of PC's in the future.
Senior Member
Posts: 3408
Joined: 2013-03-10
When I began to read the article and got to the point where royalty free was mentioned, I knew Intel wouldn't be aboard. Nvidia as well these days loves their restricted in-house technologies, so their participation was pretty much 50-50. I guess they judged that since Intel isn't interested, it will have no private consumer future, and in the pro market Nvidia already has their proprietary NVlink, so they wouldn't want their left hand to compete with the right hand.
Member
Posts: 66
Joined: 2006-09-23
No Intel = No consumer products
Do we need more than what PCIe can deliver currently?
Looks like there are a few big scale computing companies in there though so might be something for the datacentre/supercomputer crowd maybe?