Detailed analysis of communication at all layers of the PCIe stack.
While the original PCIe 1.0 had a low available bandwidth of just 8GB/sec, doubling the speed with each iteration has raised the bar for PCI Express 5.0 to 128GB/sec over 16 lanes of traffic. As the bandwidth increases, so does the potential for crosstalk and discontinuity, making recent innovations in PCB trace materials and lane margining a prerequisite for this rapid evolution? The technical versatility of the PCI Express format is another important factor, and the focus on interchangeability has influenced the designers of PCIe test equipment and hardware in equal measure. Backwards compatibility between revisions has remained a hallmark, and slot sizes of 1x through 16x are congruous with any size PCI Express card, with the smaller of the two items dictating the bandwidth availability…