CXL Is the Next Era For Memory Solution

There have been severa digital transformations during the pandemic, and technological advances in AI have kept pace with it, which has led to an increase in the demand for AI. Several industries are already embracing AI at scale, from the automotive sector and finance to healthcare and education.

Recent examples include self-driving cars and chatbots. Furthermore, AI is becoming increasingly useful in areas like image processing, speech recognition, and natural language processing, which leads to impressive advances.

A new formula
Memory capacities in the current computing system aren’t large enough to handle the growing data volumes. AI uses massive amounts of data, so central processing units (CPUs) can only store a maximum of 16 DRAMs (maximum 8 TB), whereas their memory capacity is much smaller than what’s needed.

With the arrival of the age of artificial intelligence, a memory platform that supports fast interfaces and easy scalability becomes increasingly critical. An emerging memory solution for the AI era is a DRAM module based on Compute Express Link (CXL). Additionally, memory-based AI processors have been used in processing-in-memory (PIM) and computing storage.

What makes CXL the next generation of solutions
The CXL interface serves to improve the efficiency of computing systems’ memory, CPU and graphics processor (GPU). The CPU and memory of conventional platforms share an interface for communicating with each other.

The fact that there are so many different interfaces to communicate creates latency, thus slowing down processes. Since AI and machine learning are being used to process more data, latency issues have intensified.

Introducing its first-ever CXL-based software development solution in May 2021, Samsung Electronics marketed CXL memory solutions. CXL has the following advantages:

Memory Expansion
Solid state drives (SSDs), which are external storage devices, are similar to the CXL Memory Expander. They are devices that expand DRAM capacity when they are installed in the same location as SSDs. In other words, by improving the interface, it is possible to increase a system’s DRAM capacity without having to alter the existing server structure or change it totally.

Data Process
The Memory Expander has the advantage of efficient data processing. With a higher bandwidth, devices are able to share memory and utilize their resources more efficiently. By sharing common memory areas, they can use the accelerator’s memory as if it were the main memory. It is also possible for devices without their own internal memory to take advantage of that main memory.

Accelerated
Key function of the CXL Memory Expander will leverage both the accelerator and the CPU to improve system computing speeds, supporting much smoother and more rapid data processing.

There is a possibility that not many in the industry will be aware of the concept of CXL since it is new in the market, there will be a number of factors that are promoting its view as a driving force in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including its ability to improve data processing efficiency.

The company will position itself as an industry leader with next-generation memory solutions that are capable of accommodating the fast-evolving data processing landscape, by introducing the Scalable Memory Development Kit (SMDK), a software solution which includes the CXL memory hardware.