Key Industry Players Converge to Advance CXL, a New High-Speed CPU Interconnect for Breakthrough Data Center Performance

Key High­lights:
• Ali­baba, Cis­co, Dell EMC, Face­book, Goog­le, Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se, Huawei,
Intel Cor­po­ra­ti­on and Micro­soft team up on the new Com­pu­te Express Link (CXL)
tech­no­lo­gy to acce­le­ra­te rapidly gro­wing data workloads such as Arti­fi­ci­al Intelligence
and Machi­ne Lear­ning, rich media ser­vices, High-Per­for­mance Com­pu­ting and Cloud
applications.
CXL Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on 1.0 rati­fied to address gro­wing high-per­for­mance CPU-to-Device,
inter­con­nect needs and pro­vi­de impro­ved memo­ry cohe­ren­cy for hig­her performance
of data-inten­si­ve applications.
• The new open stan­dard will help fos­ter an open acce­le­ra­tor eco­sys­tem for high
per­for­mance, hete­ro­ge­neous com­pu­ting. Inte­res­ted mem­ber com­pa­nies and
insti­tu­ti­ons are encou­ra­ged to join.

Bea­ver­ton, OR, USA – March 11, 2019 – Ali­baba, Cis­co, Dell EMC, Face­book, Google,
Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se, Hua­wei, Intel Cor­po­ra­ti­on and Micro­soft today announ­ced the
for­ma­ti­on of a new indus­try stan­dard group dedi­ca­ted to advan­cing Com­pu­te Express Link
(CXL), a new high-speed CPU-to-Device and CPU-to-Memo­ry inter­con­nect desi­gned to
acce­le­ra­te next-gene­ra­ti­on data cen­ter per­for­mance. The group of com­pa­nies also ratified
the CXL Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on 1.0, an open indus­try stan­dard that deli­vers breakthrough
per­for­mance for emer­ging usa­ge models while sup­port­ing an open eco­sys­tem for data
cen­ter acce­le­ra­tors and other high-speed enhancements.

CXL Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on 1.0 Available Now

The CXL Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on 1.0 enables a high-speed, effi­ci­ent inter­con­nect bet­ween the CPU and
plat­form enhance­ments and workload acce­le­ra­tors, such as GPUs, FPGAs and other
pur­po­se-built acce­le­ra­tor solu­ti­ons. The tech­no­lo­gy is built upon the well-estab­lished PCI
Express® (PCIe®) infra­struc­tu­re, lever­aging the PCIe 5.0 phy­si­cal and elec­tri­cal inter­face to
pro­vi­de advan­ced pro­to­col in three key areas:
1. I/O Protocol
2. Memo­ry Pro­to­col, initi­al­ly allo­wing a host to share memo­ry with an accelerator
3. Cohe­ren­cy Interface

CXL tech­no­lo­gy main­ta­ins memo­ry cohe­ren­cy bet­ween the CPU memo­ry space and memory
on atta­ched devices, which allows resour­ce sha­ring for hig­her per­for­mance, reduced
soft­ware stack com­ple­xi­ty, and lower over­all sys­tem cost. This per­mits users to sim­ply focus
on tar­get workloads as oppo­sed to the red­un­dant memo­ry manage­ment hard­ware in their
acce­le­ra­tors. CXL was desi­gned to be an indus­try open stan­dard inter­face for high-speed
com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, as acce­le­ra­tors are incre­asing­ly used to com­ple­ment CPUs in sup­port of
emer­ging appli­ca­ti­ons such as Arti­fi­ci­al Intel­li­gence and Machi­ne Lear­ning. The specification
is available to com­pa­nies that join the CXL Consortium.

Join CXL Indus­try Leaders

The foun­ding pro­mo­ter com­pa­nies repre­sent a wide-ran­ge of indus­try exper­ti­se and include
lea­ding Cloud Ser­vice Pro­vi­ders, Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons OEMs and Sys­tem OEMs. The group is in
the pro­cess of incor­po­ra­ti­on as an open stan­dard body. Fur­ther­mo­re, efforts are now
under­way to crea­te inno­va­ti­ve usa­ges that levera­ge CXL tech­no­lo­gy as well as deve­lop CXL
Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on 2.0 to fur­ther the standard’s tech­ni­cal fea­tures and capa­bi­li­ties. For
infor­ma­ti­on on how to get invol­ved, cont­act admin@computeexpresslink.org.

About Com­pu­te Express Link

Com­pu­te Express Link (CXL) is a high-speed CPU inter­con­nect tech­no­lo­gy that accelerates
next gene­ra­ti­on data cen­ter per­for­mance. Ali­baba, Cis­co, Dell EMC, Face­book, Google,
Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se, Hua­wei, Intel Cor­po­ra­ti­on and Micro­soft are forming an open
indus­try stan­dard group to deve­lop tech­ni­cal spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons that faci­li­ta­te breakthrough
per­for­mance for emer­ging usa­ge models while sup­port­ing an open eco­sys­tem for data
cen­ter acce­le­ra­tors and other high-speed enhance­ments. For more infor­ma­ti­on on the CXL
Con­sor­ti­um, plea­se visit www.computeexpresslink.org.
# # #

PCI-SIG, PCI Express, and PCIe are regis­tered trade­marks of PCI-SIG. All other trademarks
are the pro­per­ty of their respec­ti­ve owners.
CXL Pro­mo­ter State­ments of Support

Ali­baba

Ali­baba is glad to sup­port the glo­bal deve­lo­p­ment and col­la­bo­ra­ti­on of the CXL ecosystem.
As a tech­no­lo­gy inno­va­tor on cloud infra­struc­tu­re and com­pu­ting, we hope to dri­ve the
deve­lo­p­ment of CXL tog­e­ther with other indus­try lea­ding play­ers, deli­ve­ring more tangible
bene­fits to our cus­to­mers and the com­mu­ni­ty at large.”
Qiang Liu, Seni­or Direc­tor, Ali­baba Infra­struc­tu­re Ser­vice, Ali­baba Group

Dell EMC

Dell EMC is deligh­ted to be part of the CXL Con­sor­ti­um and its all-star cast of promoter
com­pa­nies. We are encou­ra­ged to see the true open­ness of CXL, and look for­ward to more
indus­try play­ers joi­ning this effort. The syn­er­gy bet­ween CXL and Gen‑Z is clear, and both
will be important com­pon­ents in sup­port­ing Dell EMC’s kine­tic infra­struc­tu­re and this data
era.”
Robert Hor­muth, Vice Pre­si­dent & Fel­low, Chief Tech­no­lo­gy Offi­cer, Ser­ver & Infrastructure
Sys­tems, Dell EMC

Face­book

Face­book is exci­ted to join CXL as a foun­ding mem­ber to enable and fos­ter a stan­dards­ba­sed open acce­le­ra­tor eco­sys­tem for effi­ci­ent and advan­ced next gene­ra­ti­on systems.”
Vijay Rao, Direc­tor of Tech­no­lo­gy and Stra­tegy, Facebook

Goog­le

Goog­le sup­ports the open Com­pu­te Express Link col­la­bo­ra­ti­on. Our cus­to­mers will benefit
from the rich eco­sys­tem that CXL will enable for acce­le­ra­tors, memo­ry, and storage
technologies.”
Rob Sprink­le, Tech­ni­cal Lead, Plat­forms Infra­struc­tu­re, Goog­le LLC

HPE

At HPE we belie­ve that being able to com­po­se com­pu­te resour­ces over open inter­faces is
cri­ti­cal if our indus­try is to keep pace with the demands of a data and AI-dri­ven future. We
applaud Intel for ope­ning up the inter­face to the pro­ces­sor. CXL will help cus­to­mers utilize
acce­le­ra­tors more effi­ci­ent­ly and dove­tails well with the open Gen‑Z memory-semantic
inter­con­nect stan­dard to aid in buil­ding ful­ly-com­posable, workload-opti­mi­zed systems.”
Mark Pot­ter, HPE CTO and Direc­tor of Hew­lett Packard Labs

Hua­wei

Being a lea­ding pro­vi­der in the indus­try, Hua­wei will play an important role in the
con­tri­bu­ti­on of tech­no­lo­gy spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on. Huawei’s intel­li­gent com­pu­ting pro­ducts which
incor­po­ra­tes Huawei’s chip, acce­le­ra­ti­on com­pon­ents and intel­li­gent manage­ment together
with inno­va­ti­ve opti­mi­zed sys­tem design, can deli­ver end-to-end solu­ti­ons which
signi­fi­cant­ly impro­ves the roll­out and sys­tem effi­ci­en­cy of data centers.”
Zhang Xia­o­hua, GM of Huawei’s Intel­li­gent Com­pu­ting BU

Intel

CXL is an important mile­stone for data-cen­tric com­pu­ting, and will be a foundational
stan­dard for an open, dyna­mic acce­le­ra­tor eco­sys­tem. Like USB and PCI Express, which
Intel also co-foun­ded, we can look for­ward to a new wave of indus­try inno­va­ti­on and
cus­to­mer value deli­ver­ed through the CXL standard.”
Jim Pap­pas, Direc­tor of Tech­no­lo­gy Initia­ti­ves, Intel Corporation

Micro­soft

Micro­soft is joi­ning the CXL con­sor­ti­um to dri­ve the deve­lo­p­ment of new indus­try bus
stan­dards to enable future gene­ra­ti­ons of cloud ser­vers. Micro­soft stron­gly belie­ves in
indus­try col­la­bo­ra­ti­on to dri­ve breakth­rough inno­va­ti­on. We look for­ward to combining
efforts of the con­sor­ti­um with our own acce­le­ra­ted hard­ware achie­ve­ments to advance
emer­ging workloads from deep lear­ning to high per­for­mance com­pu­ting for the bene­fit of
our customers.”
Dr. Leen­dert van Doorn, Distin­gu­is­hed Engi­neer, Azu­re, Microsoft
Indus­try State­ment of Support

Gen‑Z Con­sor­ti­um

As a Con­sor­ti­um foun­ded to encou­ra­ge an open eco­sys­tem for the next-gene­ra­ti­on memory
and com­pu­te archi­tec­tures, Gen‑Z wel­co­mes Com­pu­te Express Link (CXL) to the industry
and we look for­ward to oppor­tu­ni­ties for future col­la­bo­ra­ti­on bet­ween our organizations.”
Kur­tis Bow­man, Pre­si­dent, Gen‑Z Consortium