Samsung Electronics just revealed that they have developed the first-ever Compute Express Link (CXL) 2.0 memory in the industry. They also collaborated with Intel to make sure that this memory is fully optimized for use with their Xeon platform.
According to Jim Pappas, who is the director of Technology Initiatives at Intel Corporation, they are thrilled to collaborate with Samsung and their efforts to build a thriving ecosystem for CXL. Intel plans to work hand in hand with Samsung to encourage the adoption and expansion of groundbreaking CXL products across the industry.
Samsung Electronics has unveiled their latest development which is a DRAM module with a 128GB capacity and support for the PCIe 5.0 interface using x8 lanes. It delivers a total bandwidth of 35GB/s which is slower than direct-attached system memory. However, the new CXL 2.0 technology supports advanced features like memory pooling and switching which allows multiple hosts to connect and allocate memory dynamically from a shared resource as required. This provides data centers with more flexibility and efficiency when it comes to managing compute resources.
CXL is an open standard that allows different memory types to connect to the CPU and is typically used for high-performance data center computing. It is based on PCIe 5.0 and designed to deliver fast, low-latency communication in complex computing environments that use different types of hardware. Apart from connecting huge memory pools, CXL boosts performance by enabling memory tiering between different memory types and ensures coherence with the host CPU’s system memory.
CXL devices come in three main types that are simply labeled as Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3. Type 1 is primarily utilized for specialized accelerators that don’t have their own memory and, as such, require coherent access to the CPU’s system memory through the CXL interface. Type 2, on the other hand, is intended for general-purpose accelerators that have their own local memory, but can still access the CPU’s system memory, or vice versa. Finally, Type 3 is for memory expansion and persistent memory, such as the DRAM module that Samsung unveiled today, as well as other forms of non-volatile storage.
Jangseok Choi, who is the Vice President of the New Business Planning Team at Samsung Electronics, stated that being a part of the CXL Consortium Board of Directors has enabled Samsung Electronics to be at the forefront of CXL technology. He emphasized that this innovative development is a testament to Samsung’s unwavering commitment to expanding the CXL ecosystem even further by collaborating with data center, server, and chipset companies across the industry.
Samsung is set to commence mass production of the CXL 2.0 DRAM module later this year. Furthermore, Samsung plans to broaden its range of CXL 2.0 offerings with various capacities to meet the needs of modern data centers. Samsung is collaborating with Montage to manufacture CXL 2.0 compliant controllers.
Stephen Tai, who is the President of Montage Technology, expressed his excitement at being part of the production of the first-ever CXL 2.0 compliant controllers. He also added that Montage Technology is eager to continue working with Samsung to promote CXL technology and expand its ecosystem.
The significance of CXL is expected to increase alongside the demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads that necessitate enormous amounts of high-speed data processing.
Via TechPowerUp