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Lane
Lanes is composed of a transmiter and receive pair of differential lines. Each lane is
composed of 4 wires or signal paths, meaning conceptually, each lane is a full-duplex
byte stream, transporting data packets in 8 bit 'byte' format, between endpoints of a link,
in both directions simultaneously.
Physical PCIe slots may contain from one to thirty-two lanes, in powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8,
16 and 32). Lane counts are written with an × prefix (e.g., ×16 represents a sixteen-lane
card or slot).
For years, PCI has been a versatile, functional way to connect sound, video and
network cards to a motherboard.
The initial rollout of PCI-Express provides three consumer flavors: x1, x2, and x16. The
number represents the number of lanes: x1 has 1 lane; x2 has 2 lanes, and so on. Each
lane is bi-directional and consists of 4 pins. Lanes have a delivery transfer rate of 250
MB/ps in each direction for a total of 500 MB/ps, per lane.
However, as integrated circuit technology advanced, expansion boards got smaller and
fewer. Motherboards shrank and incorporated drive controllers, graphics adapters, sound
cards, additional interfaces, and so on. But along the way, the standard allowance for
adapter card height remained the same. Eventually, in early 2000, someone asked the
Obvious question: why not cut down the height of expansion cards, and enable case
designers to reduce the volume of the computer chassis by almost half? Bingo! Low-
profile PCI.