In 2019, less than two years after the PCIe^® 4.0 specification was released, the PCI-SIG® Consortium released the PCI Express Base Specification Revision 5.0, once again revealing the bandwidth available over a PCI Express (PCIe) link had doubled. The evolution of PCIe 5.0 technology to 32 GT/s, while remaining backward compatible with earlier specifications, provides you with new capabilities in building cloud and enterprise data centers, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications.

This doubling of the bit transfer rate, coupled with an x16 link, makes it possible to reach ~128 Gbps aggregate bandwidth. These higher transfer rates enable you to balance bandwidth requirements with simplicity by using fewer lanes for certain applications. AI, ML and other demanding, high-bandwidth applications  can take full advantage of an x16 lane. PCIe 5.0 technology also provides additional capabilities to handle signal integrity issues, such as loss and noise.