Samsung unveils industry's first memory module

A Samsung Electronics DRAM chip developed by CXL-based technology / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics

By Kim Yoo-chul

Samsung Electronics unveiled the industry's first memory module supporting the new compute express link (CXL) interconnect standard, it said Tuesday.

Integrated with its in-house double data rate 5 (DDR5) technology, this CXL-based module will enable server systems to significantly scale memory capacity and bandwidth, accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads in data centers.

The rise of AI and big data has been fueling the trend toward heterogeneous computing, where multiple processors work in parallel to handle massive volumes of data. CXL ― an open, industry-supported interconnect based on the PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 interface ― enables high-speed, low-latency communication between the host processor and devices such as accelerators, memory buffers and smart devices, while expanding memory capacity and bandwidth well beyond what is possible today, according to its statement.

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Samsung has been collaborating with several manufacturers of data centers, servers and chipsets to develop next-generation interface technology, ever since the CXL consortium was formed in 2019.

"This is the industry's first DRAM-based memory solution that runs on the CXL interface, which will play a critical role in serving data-intensive applications including AI and machine learning in data centers as well as cloud environments," Samsung Vice President Park Cheol-min was quoted as saying in the release.

"AMD is committed to driving the next generation of performance in cloud and enterprise computing. Memory research is a critical piece to unlocking this performance, and we are excited to work with Samsung to deliver advanced interconnect technology to our data center customers," Dan McNamara, AMD's senior vice president, was quoted as saying in the release.

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 recognize and utilize the CXL-based memory.

Samsung is also working with providers of data centers and cloud computing around the world to better accommodate the need for greater memory capacity that will be essential in handling big data applications including in-memory database systems. As the DDR5-based CXL memory module becomes commercialized, Samsung intends to lead the industry in meeting the demand for next-generation high-performance computing technologies that rely on expanded memory capacity and bandwidth, according to the release.

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