PCI Express is a high performance, fully scalable, well defined standard for a wide variety of computing and communications platforms. It has been defined to provide software compatibility with existing PCI drivers and operating systems. Being a packet based serial technology, PCI Express greatly reduces the number of required pins and simplifies board routing and manufacturing. PCI Express is a point-to-point technology, as opposed to the multidrop bus in PCI. Each PCI Express device has the advantage of full duplex communication with its link partner to greatly increase overall system bandwidth. The basic data rate for a single lane is double that of the 32 bit/33 MHz PCI bus. A four lane link has eight times the data rate in each direction of a conventional bus.