New memory module introducing CXL Interconnect Standard

Samsung Electronics has introduced a memory module supporting the new Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect standard, which enables upscaled memory capacity to terabyte level and substantially reduced system latency.

The CXL-based module is integrated with Samsung’s new DDR5 technology, designed to meet the high-performance demands of data-intensive applications including AI and HPC. The new memory module will enable server systems to significantly increase memory capacity and bandwidth. For customers, this opens up for substantially accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing workloads in data centres – a great leap within heterogeneous computing, where multiple processors work in parallel to process massive volumes of data.

About the technology

CXL is an open, industry-supported interconnect based on the PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 interface, and enables high-speed, low latency communication between the host processor and devices such as accelerators, memory buffers and smart I/O devices, while expanding memory capacity and bandwidth well beyond what’s possible today.

Unlike conventional DDR-based memory with limited memory channels, Samsung’s CXL-enabled DDR5 module can scale memory capacity up to terabyte level, while dramatically reducing system latency caused by memory caching. In addition to CXL hardware innovation, Samsung has incorporated several controller and software technologies like memory mapping, interface converting and error management, which will allow CPUs or GPUs to recognise the CXL-based memory and utilise it as the main memory.