PCI SIG has decided to delay the release of the PCI Express 3.0 specification until the second quarter of 2010. This means that any products that will ship with the new specification won't be released until 2011 According to PC Magazine. PCI Express 3.0 was supposed to be released this year, with products due about a year after the spec's release, or in 2010.

Al Yanes, the president of the SIG said that there were problems getting backward compatibility with current PCI Express standards, such as the older PCI Express 1.0 and PCI Express 2.0. He said that while PCI gen 3 providing so much more capabilities but with the need to be still backwards-compatible it was taking longer than expected. Most of the delays are tied to verifying products in the lab. However the standard boffins have managed to move the 8-bit and 10-bit encoding schemes to 128-bit and 130-bit encoding.

However the real trick was to enable the proper encoding schemes at the three speeds used by the three PCI Express versions: 2.5-GHz, 5.0-GHz, and the new 8.0-GHz speed. Apparently most of the members in the standards group were happy with the delay.