PCI Express quiz

More questions about PCI Express

These visible examples show the question style. LearnClash turns the full topic into ranked duels and spaced repetition.

1. 1 Easy

   Which laptop port carries PCI Express data?

   Answer: Thunderbolt

   Why: Intel built it with Apple under the codename Light Peak and shipped it on a 2011 MacBook Pro; one cable carries PCIe and DisplayPort together.

2. 2 Medium

   Which M.2 socket type typically supports four PCIe lanes for SSDs?

   Answer: M key

   Why: Sockets wired for four lanes are also called socket 3, and the whole standard started life as NGFF, short for Next Generation Form Factor.

3. 3 Hard

   Which PCIe feature enables efficient sharing of I/O across virtual machines?

   Answer: SR-IOV

   Why: It splits one adapter into lightweight virtual functions, one per guest, so their traffic skips the hypervisor switch.

4. 4 Easy

   How much electrical power can a standard x16 PCI Express slot deliver independently?

   Answer: 75 watts

   Why: Any add-in card drawing beyond 75 watts requires auxiliary power cables routed directly from the power supply unit.

5. 5 Medium

   Unlike the original PCI, what type of data communication does PCIe use?

   Answer: Serial

   Why: The old PCI bus ran 32 bits at 33 MHz and every card shared its 133 MB/s; PCIe instead gives each device a private point to point link.

6. 6 Hard

   By how much does data bandwidth increase with each new PCIe generation?

   Answer: It doubles

   Why: PCIe 3.0 lifted the rate only from 5 to 8 GT/s, yet overhead fell from 20 percent to about 1.5 percent, so usable bandwidth still doubled.