Samsung Introduces DDR5 Module with PCIe 5.0-based CXL Interconnect

Samsung has unveiled a DDR5 module with a Compute Express Link. Thanks to this PCIe 5.0-based interconnect, terabyte memory modules should become available for high performance computing and artificial intelligence.

It is Samsung’s first memory module with the CXL interconnect. This is a PCIe 5.0 interface between the CPU and GPU, fpga or other accelerator, announced in 2019, which should provide cache coherency, among other things. Components of supercomputers and other high-performance computing systems must thus be able to share cache memory with high bandwidth and low latency, while the interconnect also has to allow for higher amounts of memory. Samsung is talking about terabyte level amounts.

Intel was one of the driving forces at the time of the announcement, but AMD and Arm have now also joined the standard. Google, Facebook and Huawei are also behind it. Samsung gives little further details about the memory module, which it calls CXL Memory Expander. The company reports using controller and software techniques such as memory mapping and error management for the module, and the company has also validated the module with Intel processors.

Samsung has not yet announced the size of the DDR5 used and it also seems to be a test sample for the time being, because Samsung reports that it will only be able to meet the demand for HPC applications with these types of modules as soon as they become commercially available. When that should be the case is unknown.