Citic Securities: The PCIe protocol will become a bottleneck for the AI era's slow inflation.

The report from CITIC Securities stated that PCIe is the core protocol for the interconnection between CPUs and peripherals, and its demand expansion has been relatively overlooked by the market. In the AI era, due to the insufficient native PCIe channels of CPUs and high demand for GPU channels, PCIe Switch is needed to achieve channel expansion and other requirements. The report estimated that the global market for PCIe Switch could reach 30 billion yuan by 2028, with China's domestic computing power chip matching space at around 7 billion yuan, more than double that of 2026. In terms of usage, the ratio of XPU: PCIe Switch in servers is generally between 4:1 and 2:1, with the usage of PCIe Switch increasing with the computing power chip; among them, the eight-GPU AI server is the basic model, and the solution is relatively certain; super node servers have the risk of market segmentation in private ecosystems, with overseas trends being more evident; overall usage shows slow inflation characteristics, with space being the main driving factor. In terms of price, mainstream 104-channel products range from 3,000 to 5,000 yuan. Domestic substitutes are still in the early stage, and it is recommended to focus on relatively leading companies and targets that are expected to enter the PCIe Switch market.