PCIe

PCI is a well-established interconnect standard which enables connecting components in a complex electrical system.

PCI Express – also referred to as PCIe – as its successor features higher bandwidths, smaller footprints, improved error detection, and many other advantages. Main advantage of PCIe is its easy usage from a software perspective by operating via simple memory-mapped access. A so-called Root Complex acts as the central managing instance, configuring and monitoring the interaction of CPU(s), memory, and PCIe devices.

With the evolution from PCI to PCIe, the standard has adopted to point-to-point serial data transfer, instead of parallel busses.