PCIe continues to surprise and delight

I remember back when PCIe 2.0 was released and Jim Pappas, the daddy of USB from Intel, was the champion of it. PCIe 2.0 doubled the bandwidth of 1.0, and offered better flexibility while maintaining compatibility with PCIe 1.1. It seemed like magic then providing a 5 GT/s transfer rate with a throughput up to 8 GB/s with 16-lanes—PFM. At the time, 2007, I asked Jim how far he thought they could push PCI and stay on copper. Jim is an engineer’s engineer, straight forward, no BS, and thoughtful. He rubbed his chin, a chin that is even with my