PCI-SIG has released the specifications for PCIe 4.0, promising double the maximum data transfer rate of PCIe 3.0.

PCI-SIG is an organisation which governs the specifications of the PCIe protocol, and consists of 750 members.

The PCIe 4.0 specification was announced in June, and has now been published.

PCIe 4.0’s major improvement over the previous specification is a maximum data rate of 16GT/s, as opposed to PCIe 3.0’s 8GT/s.

Additional enhancements delivered by PCIe 4.0 include:

• Reduced latency.
• Lane margining.
• Improved scalability.
• Improved I/O virtualisation and platform integration.

PCI-SIG said it plans to release the PCIe 5.0 specification in Q2 2019, which is expected to double transfer speeds yet again.

Now read: What you need to know before you buy an SSD