Final answer:
A single-lane PCIe v. 4.x link offers a maximum throughput of 1.969 GB/s. This is due to the data transfer rate of 16 GT/s and after accounting for the 128b/130b encoding overhead.
Step-by-step explanation:
A single-lane (x1) PCIe v. 4.x link offers a maximum throughput of 1.969 GB/s. The PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) interface standard is used in computers to connect high-speed components. Each generation of PCIe doubles the bandwidth compared to the previous one.
In the case of PCIe version 4.0, a x1 lane can transfer data at up to 16 GT/s (gigatransfers per second), and considering that encoding overhead is taken into account, the actual data rate is 1.969 GB/s per lane, as PCIe uses an 128b/130b encoding scheme.