Will we see PCI-E 4.0 this year?

[thecoolnessrune]

I give five years.

That sounds pretty good to me. If I were leaning conservative, that's probably what I'd say too. I think the most easily accessible use for PCI-e 4.0 comes from Mass Storage. Specifically in the case of PCH interconnectivity, where enthusiasts regularly see the limitation of things like second M.2 or PCIe ports being constricted by the x4 PCIe 3.0 link that goes between the PCH and CPU. That requires a continued trending downward of prices in the market.

NAND must continue to get cheaper.
NVMe over USB Controllers must become commodity like SATA over USB Controllers currently are.
Hotswap NVMe must become a standard feature (it's very new in Enterprise, so it'll certainly be some time before we see this trickle down to home use).

With those in place, I see PCIe 4.0 being a big factor for commodity NVMe external drives over USB (or Thunderbolt). Enthusiast platforms will of course see benefits much sooner. But over the average home user / small business / or gamer, I don't expect them to ever see a meaningful difference in PCIe 4.0 until there is some sort of shake-up in the industry. Some game changer. Just like they don't see a difference from NVMe, 32GB of memory, special "electrically isolated" audio, 4x4 MIMO Wireless, or 12 SATA Ports.

 

[wilds]

Aren't we due for SATA IV around the same time frame?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Aren't we due for SATA IV around the same time frame?

From what I remember SAS-4 is still in validation stages while SAS-5 is continuing to have very loose discussions in May. I wouldn't expect SAS-4 finalized until maybe sometime in 2019. So yeah, *maybe* SATA-4 in 2020? PCIe 4.0 would indeed swing the metrics back in favor of being able to do 4 Port HBAs with full bandwidth on an 8x card.

 

[2is]

For what duration? Upon release? 6 months? 12 months? 5 years? Never?

No, i'm sure at some point there will be a benefit, so I wouldn't say never. It should be fairly obvious since I'm talking about posting reviews that I'm talking about when they are introduced to the consumer market, and I'm also fairly sure you know exactly what timeline I'm referring to.