• The Com­pu­te Express Link Con­sor­ti­um (CXL) today announ­ces its offi­ci­al incorporation.
• The addi­ti­on of new mem­bers to CXL’s expan­ded Board of Direc­tors, announ­ced today, will help dri­ve new tech­ni­cal deve­lo­p­ments and indus­try adoption.
• CXL is the new high-speed, open stan­dard inter­con­nect that enables an acce­le­ra­tor eco­sys­tem geared towards high per­for­mance, hete­ro­ge­neous computing.
• Inte­res­ted mem­ber com­pa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons are encou­ra­ged to join.

Today, Ali­baba, Cis­co, Dell EMC, Face­book, Goog­le, Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se, Hua­wei, Intel Cor­po­ra­ti­on and Micro­soft announ­ce the incor­po­ra­ti­on of the Com­pu­te Express Link (CXL) Con­sor­ti­um, and unvei­led the names of its new­ly-elec­ted mem­bers to its Board of Directors.

The core group of key indus­try part­ners announ­ced their intent to incor­po­ra­te in March 2019, and remain dedi­ca­ted to advan­cing the CXL stan­dard, a new high-speed CPU-to-Device and CPU-to-Memo­ry inter­con­nect which acce­le­ra­tes next-gene­ra­ti­on data cen­ter performance.

The five new CXL board mem­bers are as fol­lows: Ste­ve Fields, Fel­low and Chief Engi­neer of Power Sys­tems, IBM; Gaurav Singh, Cor­po­ra­te Vice Pre­si­dent, Xilinx; Dong Wei, Stan­dards Archi­tect and Fel­low at ARM Hol­dings; Nathan Kaly­a­na­sund­ha­ram, Seni­or Fel­low at AMD Semi­con­duc­tor; and Lar­rie Carr, Fel­low, Tech­ni­cal Stra­tegy and Archi­tec­tu­re, Data Cen­ter Solu­ti­ons, Micro­chip Tech­no­lo­gy Inc.

Chair­man of the CXL Con­sor­ti­um, Jim Pap­pas, dis­cus­sed the recent developments:

“CXL is enjoy­ing unpre­ce­den­ted momen­tum with par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on of lea­ding com­pa­nies from across all seg­ments of the com­pu­ter indus­try,” said Pap­pas. “It is extre­me­ly gra­ti­fy­ing to see the level of invest­ment and focus on the suc­cess of CXL. We have a world-class tech­ni­cal team cove­ring all of the nee­ded disci­pli­nes to ensu­re suc­cess. On behalf of the CXL Board, I am deligh­ted to wel­co­me the­se new direc­tors onto the CXL Board of Direc­tors and look for­ward to their con­tri­bu­ti­ons to this important new technology.”

CXL Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on 1.1

As acce­le­ra­tors are incre­asing­ly used to com­ple­ment CPUs in sup­port of emer­ging appli­ca­ti­ons such as Arti­fi­ci­al Intel­li­gence and Machi­ne Lear­ning, CXL was desi­gned to be an indus­try open stan­dard inter­face for high-speed com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons. The spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on deli­vers breakth­rough per­for­mance for emer­ging usa­ge models while sup­port­ing an open eco­sys­tem for data cen­ter acce­le­ra­tors and other high-speed enhance­ments-it was rati­fied in March 2019.

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.

The spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on is curr­ent­ly available to com­pa­nies that join the CXL Consortium

CXL New­ly-Elec­ted Board Mem­bers’ State­ments upon Election

The new­ly-elec­ted Board Mem­bers to CXL made the fol­lo­wing comm­ents upon their con­fir­ma­ti­on to the BoD:

“CXL has achie­ved enough momen­tum to ensu­re that the­re will be broad indus­try par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on. It is now time for IBM to bring the expe­ri­ence gai­ned from 6+ years of coher­ent acce­le­ra­ti­on with CAPI and Open­CA­PI and do our part to con­tri­bu­te to the CXL eco­sys­tem.” –Ste­ve Fields, Fel­low and Chief Engi­neer of Power Sys­tems, IBM

“High per­for­mance, adap­ta­ble acce­le­ra­ti­on is going to be cri­ti­cal to meet the incre­asing demand for per­for­mance across a wide varie­ty of mar­kets,” said Gaurav Singh, cor­po­ra­te vice pre­si­dent of Archi­tec­tu­re, Veri­fi­ca­ti­on and Sys­tems Engi­nee­ring, Xilinx, Inc. “At Xilinx, we reco­gni­zed the importance of coher­ent links to con­nect pro­ces­sors, memo­ry and acce­le­ra­tors and I am exci­ted to join the CXL board to dri­ve the stan­dard for­ward. With the back­ing of hypers­ca­le cloud pro­vi­ders, sys­tem OEMs, pro­ces­sors ven­dors and tech­no­lo­gy lea­ders like Xilinx, CXL will beco­me a ubi­qui­tous pro­ces­sor inter­face for memo­ry and acce­le­ra­tors.” –Gaurav Singh, Cor­po­ra­te Vice Pre­si­dent, Xilinx

“I am deligh­ted to be appoin­ted as a new board mem­ber of the CXL Con­sor­ti­um. Arm’s mem­ber­ship at the board level not only reflects the industry’s con­fi­dence in our strong con­tri­bu­ti­on to this important, emer­ging tech­no­lo­gy, but a shared visi­on to ali­gn to a tru­ly glo­bal mul­ti-CPU stan­dard that will be appli­ca­ble to all pro­ces­sor archi­tec­tures.” –Dong Wei, Stan­dards Archi­tect and Fel­low at Arm Hol­dings, Inc.

“AMD is a strong belie­ver in the need for hete­ro­ge­neous pro­ces­sing to meet the expo­nen­ti­al demand for com­pu­te, and we are plea­sed to join with other indus­try lea­ders to dri­ve ali­gnment on a com­mon coher­ent inter­con­nect stan­dard in CXL,” said Nathan Kaly­a­na­sund­ha­ram, Seni­or Fel­low at AMD. “We look for­ward to col­la­bo­ra­ting with all the mem­bers of the CXL com­mu­ni­ty to enable a tigh­ter cou­pling and cohe­ren­cy bet­ween pro­ces­sors and acce­le­ra­tors, sim­pli­fy pro­gramming models, and enable a new wave of inno­va­ti­on in acce­le­ra­tor and sto­rage tech­no­lo­gies.” –Nathan Kaly­a­na­sund­ha­ram, Seni­or Fel­low at AMD

“I am hono­red to be elec­ted to the CXL Board of Direc­tors. CXL will be a key tech­no­lo­gy to enable breakth­rough memo­ry-cen­tric infra­struc­tu­re solu­ti­ons with the goal of impro­ving dat­a­cen­ter per­for­mance and effi­ci­en­cy. Micro­chip looks for­ward to con­tri­bu­ting to the evo­lu­ti­on of the CXL stan­dard, and the exis­ting col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with the Gen‑Z orga­niza­ti­on. –Lar­rie Carr, Fel­low, Tech­ni­cal Stra­tegy and Archi­tec­tu­re, Data Cen­ter Solu­ti­ons, Micro­chip Tech­no­lo­gy Inc.

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. CXL wel­co­mes new mem­bers. Work is now under­way to expand inno­va­ti­ve use cases that levera­ge CXL tech­no­lo­gy as well as the deve­lo­p­ment of 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) Con­sor­ti­um was foun­ded in 2019 and is dedi­ca­ted to advan­cing CXL tech­no­lo­gy, a high-speed CPU inter­con­nect tech­no­lo­gy that acce­le­ra­tes next gene­ra­ti­on data cen­ter per­for­mance. CXL Con­sor­ti­um is led by key indus­try lea­ders Ali­baba, Cis­co, Dell EMC, Face­book, Goog­le, Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se, Hua­wei, Intel Cor­po­ra­ti­on and Micro­soft. The­se com­pa­nies ori­gi­nal­ly for­med 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.