The PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group) today announced a new specification designed to take PCI Express "outside the box". According to the PCI-SIG, the new specification dubbed the PCI Express External Cabling 1.0 specification establishes a standard method of using PCIe technology over a cable by defining cable connectors, copper cabling attributes and electrical characteristics, connector retention, identification and labeling. It conforms to the PCIe 1.1 Base and electro-mechanical specifications. Standard cables and connectors have been defined for x1, x4, x8, and x16 link widths. Sideband signaling is provided via the cable to attain compatibility with existing silicon and software. The new specification currently supports signaling rates of 2.5GT/s (gigatransfers per second), the PCI-SIG said. In the future, the PCI-SIG expects to continue to advance the cabling technology by providing new enhancements and foresees support for 5GT/s signaling rates.

Oh really...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand

This has already be done. It's called Infiniband. It uses 5TB signaling, uses 1x 4x 12x connection types and is well established as an open standard interconnect. :roll: