Final answer:
A single-lane (x1) PCIe 4.x link offers a maximum throughput of 1969 MB/s, derived from the 16 GT/s transfer rate and after accounting for encoding overhead.
Step-by-step explanation:
A single-lane (x1) PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) version 4.x link offers a maximum throughput of 1969 MB/s. This is due to the fact that PCIe 4.0 doubles the transfer rate over PCIe 3.0, reaching up to 16 GT/s (gigatransfers per second) per lane. With 8 bits in a byte and considering the encoding overhead (roughly 1.54% for PCIe 4.0), the calculation for the throughput per lane is approximately (16 GT/s × 128/130 encoding) × 1 byte/8 bits, which results in a throughput of 1969 MB/s per lane.