company blog about Supply Amphenol PCIe Connectors: PCIe Gen 3,PCIe Gen 4,PCIe Gen 5,PCIe Gen 6

Supply Amphenol PCIe Connectors: PCIe Gen 3,PCIe Gen 4,PCIe Gen 5,PCIe Gen 6

Shenzhen Mingjiada Electronics Co., Ltd., as a leading global distributor of electronic components, adheres to the principle of ‘serving and benefiting our customers’ by providing a wide range of high-quality electronic components.

Core Products: Evaluation boards, integrated circuits, 5G chips, new energy ICs, IoT chips, Bluetooth chips, automotive ICs, AI ICs, Ethernet ICs, memory chips, sensors, IGBT modules, etc.

Supply Advantages

Direct from Manufacturers: All chips are genuine factory-direct products, ensuring customers receive authentic quality and avoiding the risk of counterfeits.

Adequate Stock Availability: Leveraging robust supply chain management capabilities, we maintain sufficient stock to meet customers’ urgent requirements.

Flexible procurement solutions: We support both small-batch samples and large-volume orders, offering highly competitive tiered pricing to meet the needs of customers of all sizes.

Rapid delivery capability: Leveraging our domestic warehousing centres and efficient logistics system, we can dispatch goods from domestic warehouses within 48 hours, significantly shortening customer project timelines.

I. Amphenol PCIe Gen 3 Connectors: A Proven Foundation for High-Speed Interconnects

PCIe Gen 3 increases the data transfer rate to 8GT/s and adopts 128b/130b encoding, drastically reducing encoding overhead from 20% in PCIe Gen 2 to 1.5%. With an effective bandwidth of 1GB/s per channel, it lays the groundwork for the widespread adoption of high-performance devices. In response to the PCIe Gen 3 specification, Amphenol has launched a range of connector products suitable for various applications, with a core focus on signal integrity and design flexibility, making them the mainstream choice in sectors such as industrial and consumer electronics.

Amphenol’s core PCIe Gen 3 connector products include the BergStak® series and the G830MA series. The G830MA series features a 0.60 mm pitch design and supports 85-ohm impedance matching, offering excellent signal integrity (SI) that effectively reduces insertion loss, return loss and crosstalk, whilst fully complying with the electrical requirements of PCIe Gen 3 (8GT/s). This series features ultra-high contact force to ensure reliable mating; the polarised key design on the pin edges prevents misalignment, whilst the flash gold plating process effectively resists corrosion and extends the product’s service life. The BergStak® series, meanwhile, offers a 0.80 mm pitch option, supporting a wide range of stack heights and pin counts, balancing cost and performance to suit high-performance industrial applications.

In terms of applications, Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 3 connectors are widely used in desktop computers, workstations, industrial PCs, embedded systems and other devices. They can be used to connect end devices such as graphics cards, standard NVMe SSDs and network cards. Thanks to their mature technology, stable performance and high cost-effectiveness, they continue to hold a significant market share in mid-to-low-end electronic devices. Additionally, Amphenol’s XCede and AirMAX series board-to-board connectors are also compatible with the PCIe Gen 3 specification, supporting various board-to-board configurations such as backplanes and mezzanine boards to meet the structural design requirements of different devices.

II. Amphenol PCIe Gen 4 Connectors: Performance Upgrade with Doubled Bandwidth

With the increasing demand for data transmission, PCIe Gen 4 has doubled the data transfer rate to 16 GT/s, with an effective bandwidth of 2 GB/s per lane. Whilst maintaining backward compatibility, it further optimises signal integrity and power management capabilities, providing more ample bandwidth support for high-speed storage and high-end graphics cards. Keeping pace with technological advancements, Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 4 connectors build upon the reliability of Gen 3 products to deliver a comprehensive performance upgrade, whilst balancing design flexibility with application adaptability.

Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 4 connectors feature cutting-edge physical layer design, optimising contact structure and impedance matching to effectively reduce signal interference during high-speed transmission, ensuring stable data transfer at 16GT/s. Its core product range includes vertical and right-angle edge-mounted connectors, featuring a 1.00 mm pitch design and offering multiple termination options such as surface mount, through-hole soldering and crimping, to meet the installation requirements of various devices including desktop computers, servers and workstations. Furthermore, Amphenol’s ExaMAX series of connectors is compatible with the PCIe Gen 4 specification, supporting connection scenarios ranging from 25 Gb/s to 112 Gb/s. They comply with industry standards such as IEEE 25GBASE-KR and 50GBASE-KR, making them suitable for high-speed interconnect requirements in mid-to-high-end data centres.

In terms of application scenarios, Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 4 connectors are primarily targeted at mid-to-high-end electronic devices, including high-end gaming PCs, professional workstations, enterprise-class servers and high-end NVMe SSDs. Compared to Gen 3 products, they not only meet higher bandwidth transmission requirements but also reduce device power consumption through improved power management design, making them suitable for power-sensitive scenarios such as new energy and industrial control. Furthermore, this series of connectors offers backward compatibility, allowing for direct replacement of Gen 3 products, thereby reducing the cost and complexity of equipment upgrades.

III. Amphenol PCIe Gen 5 Connectors: A Breakthrough for High-Bandwidth Requirements

PCIe Gen 5 doubles the data transfer rate to 32 GT/s, with an effective bandwidth of 4 GB/s per lane. It retains the 128b/130b encoding scheme whilst introducing Forward Error Correction (FEC) technology and optimising the link training mechanism to further reduce transmission latency. This meets the high-bandwidth, low-latency requirements of high-end equipment such as AI accelerator cards, ultra-high-speed NVMe SSDs and large data centre switches. Leveraging its extensive expertise in high-speed interconnect technology, Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 5 connectors represent a new breakthrough in performance, reliability and application adaptability.

The core strengths of Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 5 connectors lie in their exceptional signal integrity and immunity to interference. They employ an optimised shielding structure and differential pair design to effectively suppress crosstalk and electromagnetic interference (EMI). Combined with FEC technology, they can automatically correct signal errors during transmission, ensuring stability and reliability at high speeds of 32GT/s. The product range includes vertical edge-mounted connectors and mezzanine connectors. Among these, the Cool Edge series connectors are fully compliant with the PCIe Gen 5 specification, support hot-swapping, and feature an open pin-out design, making them an ideal choice for solid-state drives, enterprise data centres, network interface cards and other devices. Furthermore, Amphenol’s Paladin series interconnect system supports performance of up to 112 GB/s, is compatible with PCIe Gen 5 and higher specifications, and features an ultra-high-density design capable of supporting 144 differential pairs within a 1U space, meeting the high-density interconnect requirements of data centres.

In terms of application scenarios, Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 5 connectors are primarily focused on the high-end market, including AI servers, supercomputing centres, high-end storage arrays and industrial automation equipment. With the rapid development of technologies such as AI, big data and cloud computing, data processing volumes are growing exponentially. Anferno’s PCIe Gen 5 connectors, with their high-speed transmission capability of 32GT/s, provide stable interconnect support for these high-end devices, whilst their backward compatibility with Gen 3 and Gen 4 facilitates gradual equipment upgrades. Furthermore, this series of connectors is also suitable for sectors such as medical equipment and automotive infotainment systems, meeting the high-speed interconnect requirements of high-end electronic devices.

IV. Amphenol PCIe Gen 6 Connectors: The Benchmark for Next-Generation High-Speed Interconnects

PCIe Gen 6 marks the entry of PCIe technology into the 64GT/s era, with an effective bandwidth of 8GB/s per channel. It utilises PAM4 modulation technology (4-level pulse amplitude modulation), Each symbol can transmit 2 bits of data. Additionally, new technologies such as Flit Mode (fixed-length data packet mode) and IDE (Integrity Encryption) have been introduced. These enhancements not only increase bandwidth but also further ensure the reliability and security of data transmission, meeting the extreme interconnect requirements of next-generation electronic devices. Amphenol was the first to launch connector products compliant with the PCIe Gen 6 specification, leading the trend in high-speed interconnect technology.

Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 6 connectors comprehensively exceed industry standards, achieving data rates of up to 64 GT/s. By utilising PAM4 modulation technology, they double the bandwidth without altering the package dimensions. This product series features a standard pin layout and supports backward compatibility, enabling easy upgrading or replacement of existing PCIe Gen 1 to Gen 5 products, thereby reducing equipment upgrade costs. Core products include vertical edge-mounted connectors and Mini Cool Edge IO connectors. The Mini Cool Edge IO connector features an ultra-thin design with a 0.60 mm pitch, supporting both cable and edge-mounted connections. Compared to traditional PCB routing methods, it significantly extends signal transmission path lengths whilst maintaining excellent signal integrity, offering both cost-effectiveness and scalability.

Amphenol’s PCIe Gen 6 connectors also boast a wealth of functional features, offering multiple lane options including X1, X4, X8 and X16 to meet varying bandwidth requirements; they support a side latch design to secure the position of mating connectors, enhancing connection reliability; and utilise low-halogen materials that comply with RoHS environmental standards, meeting the requirements of various green electronic devices. In terms of application scenarios, this series of connectors is primarily targeted at next-generation high-end equipment, including AI training servers, quantum computing devices, 8K ultra-high-definition display equipment and next-generation automotive electronic systems. It is also suitable for industrial control, medical devices (such as ventilators) and routers, providing comprehensive interconnection solutions for scenarios requiring extremely high bandwidth and high reliability.