The CXL 3.1 specification introduces CXL fabric manager and extensions, Trusted-Execution-Environment Security Protocol (TSP), and facilitate memory sharing between accelerators and GPUs. This panel presentation will introduce the new features and explore how CXL attached memory to meet the increased memory capacity and bandwidth for HPC, AI, and ML applications in modern data centers. Expert representatives from CXL Consortium member companies will highlight ROI examples when implementing CXL attached memory.

CXL is mostly talked about in the memory expansion use-case context. However, VMware and Samsung are working together to bring unique value propositions by enabling newer use-cases beyond just memory. A CXL Type-2 accelerator-based solution using a custom hardware-software co-design has the potential to leverage more of the CXL capabilities such as to improve CapEx by reducing TCO, or provide dynamic memory usage and better workload migration performance and thus improving OpEx. We will also describe advantages provided by such an approach and cover real application benchmarks.

Processor performance is rapidly outpacing memory bandwidth, creating a bottleneck or “wall” between compute and memory. This “Memory Wall” limits overall server compute performance, especially in memory-intensive AI applications. This presentation will address how to break through the memory wall with CXL-attached memory. Attendees will learn how popular use cases, such as in-memory databases & AI inferencing, are driving the need for more memory bandwidth and capacity.

As compute architectures expand beyond a single socket, the proprietary interconnect within the architecture becomes part of the solution’s innovation options. The presentation will look at the history of open interconnects before CXL within the sea of proprietary connectivity and how CXL will most likely co-exist in the future.

VMware has been on an evolving journey on memory innovations mainly first with persistent memory, then with memory tiering, and is now extending that with CXL. CXL provides an opportunity for VMware (by Broadcom) to further improve on performance, and provide further customer benefits such as TCO reduction, server consolidation, and even disaggregation, with increased capacity and bandwidth to run workloads like Mission critical databases, AI/ML and analytics.