The PCI Special Interest Group has started a plan to develop a variant on PCI Express 3.0 that would challenge the Thunderbolt format from Apple and Intel. Its as yet unnamed format would be more than three times faster at 32Gbps, and eight billion transfers per second, with the same peak four lanes of data at distances of up to 10 feet. It too would carry power on copper wires, up to as much as 20W, and would have a flatter cable than the small but round Thunderbolt wire.
