PCI Express

Originally known as 3rd Generation I/O (3GIO), PCI Express, or PCIe, was approved in July 2002 as a serial computer expansion bus standard. PCI Express was designed as a high-speed replacement for the aging PCI (peripheral component interconnect) and AGP (accelerated graphics port) standards and is available in different formats. The data transmitted over PCI Express is sent over wires (called lanes) in full duplex mode (both directions at the same time). Each lane can transfer speeds around 250 MB/s and each slot can be scaled from 1 to 32 lanes. With 16 lanes, PCI Express supports a bandwidth of up to 4,000 MB/s. The following images show what the PCI Express slots look like on a motherboard.

Computer acronyms, Expansion slot, Hardware terms, M.2, Motherboard terms, NVMe, PCI