Samsung has unveiled a new version of its Compute Express Link (CXL) DRAM that can enable extremely high memory capacity with low latency in IT systems.
Since introducing the industry’s first CXL DRAM prototype with a FPGA controller back in May of last year, the Korean hardware giant has been working closely with data center, enterprise server and chipset companies to create an improved and customizable CXL device.
Samsung’s new CXL DRAM is built with an ASIC CXL controller and is the first device of its kind to pack in 512GB of DDR5 DRAM with four times the memory capacity and one-fifth the system latency when compared to its prototype.
VP of memory global sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics as well as the director of the CXL Consortium, Cheolmin Park provided further insight on the benefits of CXL DRAM in a press release, saying:
“CXL DRAM will become a critical turning point for future computing structures by substantially advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and big data services, as we aggressively expand its usage in next-generation memory architectures including software-defined memory (SDM). Samsung will continue to collaborate across the industry to develop and standardize CXL memory solutions, while fostering an increasingly solid ecosystem.”
CXL Memory Expansion
As the growth of the metaverse, AI and big data have led to massive increases in the amount of data produced, conventional DDR design limits the scaling of memory capacity beyond the tens of terabyte range which is why Samsung and other members of the CXL Consortium are working to develop an entirely new memory interface.
Since a large pool of memory is shared between CXL and the main memory, the memory capacity of a server can be expanded to tens of terabytes while also increasing its bandwidth to several terabytes per second.
Samsung’s new 512GB CXL DRAM will be the first memory device to support the PCIe 5.0 interface. The device will also come in an EDSFF (E3.S) form factor which makes it well suitable for next-gen high-capacity enterprise servers and data centers.
At the same time, the company plans to unveil an updated version of its open-source Scalable Memory Development Kit (SMDK) to allow the CXL memory expander to work seamlessly in heterogeneous memory systems so that developers can incorporate CXL memory into their IT systems running AI, big data and cloud applications.
Going forward, Samsung will begin sampling its 512GB CXL DRAM with customers and partners for joint evaluation and testing in Q3 of this year with plans to have it ready to be released as a commercial product once next-gen server platforms become available.
