Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that for the first time in the industry, it has successfully built a Compute Express Link (CXL) infrastructure certified by Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions.

Elements that configure servers, from CXL-related products to software, can now be directly verified at the Samsung Memory Research Center (SMRC) located in Hwaseong, South Korea. Once CXL products are verified by Samsung, they can immediately be requested for product registration to Red Hat, enabling faster product development.

Marking its first achievement through the infrastructure, Samsung has successfully verified its CMM-D product for the first time in the industry this month. The company can also provide tailored solutions to customers by optimizing products at earlier development stages.

“We’re very pleased that our partnership with Red Hat is able to deliver CXL memory products with enhanced reliability to our customers,” said Taeksang Song, Vice President and Head of the New DRAM Solution Development Team at Samsung Electronics. “Through our continued collaboration spanning software and hardware, we will remain at the forefront of developing innovative memory solutions as well as the CXL ecosystem.”

Kyeong Sang Kim, Red Hat Korea GM said, “The optimization of Samsung’s hardware for Red Hat’s software underscores the value of open source technology as an imperative when it comes to expanding next-generation memory solutions such as CMM-D. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Samsung to further extend CXL solutions to the market.”

Following the successful CXL memory verification by Red Hat for the first time in the industry last December, Samsung has also been certified for datacenter SSD products. Customers using Red Hat-certified products can build high-performance systems by receiving world-class Linux support, complementing the stable hardware operation of Samsung.

Samsung and Red Hat have also been working closely together in various areas, including product certification for both hardware and software, enriching the next-generation CXL ecosystem.

At the Red Hat Summit held in Denver, Colorado, in May, Samsung demonstrated its CMM-D¹ embedded in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.3, which enhances the performance of Deep Learning Recommendation Models (DLRM).

The demo utilized the Scalable Memory Development Kit’s (SMDK) Memory Interleaving software technology, highlighting improved memory access performance. SMDK-equipped CMM-D allows customers to build high-performance AI models, without having to make significant investments, by accelerating the data processing, AI learning and inferencing speeds.

Through their strong partnership, Samsung and Red Hat aim to provide customer solutions suitable for a wide range of user systems while introducing new technology standards to an array of partners and customers and expanding the CXL memory ecosystem.

¹ CMM-D is Samsung’s CXL Memory Module DRAM, a DRAM solution based on the PCIe interface that supports the CXL protocol.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that for the first time in the industry, it has successfully verified Compute Express Link (CXL) memory operations in a real user environment with open-source software provider Red Hat, leading the expansion of its CXL ecosystem.

Due to the exponential growth of data throughput and memory requirements for emerging fields like generative AI, autonomous driving and in-memory databases (IMDBs), the demand for systems with greater memory bandwidth and capacity is also increasing. CXL is a unified interface standard that connects various processors, such as CPUs, GPUs and memory devices through a PCIe® interface that can serve as a solution for limitations in existing systems in terms of speed, latency and expandability.

“Samsung has been working closely with a wide range of industry partners in areas from software, data centers and servers to chipset providers, and has been at the forefront of building up the CXL memory ecosystem,” said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics. “Our CXL partnership with Red Hat is an exemplary case of collaboration between advanced software and hardware, which will enrich and accelerate the CXL ecosystem as a whole.”

In this latest development, Samsung has optimized its CXL memory for Red Hat Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) 9.3 and verified memory recognition, read and write operations in Red Hat’s KVM and Podman environments. This allows data center clients to easily use Samsung’s CXL memory without having to make additional adjustments to their existing hardware.

“The successful verification of Samsung’s CXL Memory Expander interoperability with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is significant because it opens up the applicability of the CXL Memory Expander to IaaS¹ and PaaS²-based software provided by Red Hat,” said Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice President and Head of Red Hat Asia Pacific. “This is an important milestone in the integration of hardware and software to build an open-source ecosystem for next-generation memory development.”

Samsung and Red Hat are currently working together on a “RHEL 9.3 CXL Memory Enabling Guide” to help users utilize Samsung’s CXL memory on RHEL 9.3 and build high-performance computing systems in various user environments.

The two companies first signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in May 2022 to collaborate on next-generation memory and will continue their efforts through the Samsung Memory Research Center (SMRC) in developing CXL open-source and reference models. The ongoing partnership covers a range of storage and memory products, including NVMe SSDs, CXL Memory, computational memory/storage and fabrics.

¹ Infrastructure as a Service.
² Platform as a Service.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, and NAVER Corporation, a global internet company with top-notch AI technology, today announced a wide-reaching collaboration to develop semiconductor solutions tailored for hyperscale artificial intelligence (AI) models. Leveraging Samsung’s next-generation memory technologies like computational storage, processing-in-memory (PIM) and processing-near-memory (PNM), as well as Compute Express Link (CXL), the companies intend to pool their hardware and software resources to dramatically accelerate the handling of massive AI workloads.

Recent advances in hyperscale AI have led to an exponential growth in data volumes that need to be processed. However, the performance and efficiency limitations of current computing systems pose significant challenges in meeting these heavy computational requirements, fueling the need for new AI-optimized semiconductor solutions.

Developing such solutions requires an extensive convergence of semiconductor and AI disciplines. Samsung is combining its semiconductor design and manufacturing expertise with NAVER’s experience in the development and verification of AI algorithms and AI-driven services, to create solutions that take the performance and power efficiency of large-scale AI to a new level.

For years, Samsung has been introducing memory and storage that support high-speed data processing in AI applications, from computational storage (SmartSSD) and PIM-enabled high bandwidth memory (HBM-PIM) to next-generation memory supporting the Compute Express Link (CXL) interface. Samsung will now join with NAVER to optimize these memory technologies in advancing large-scale AI systems.

NAVER will continue to refine HyperCLOVA, a hyperscale language model with over 200 billion parameters, while improving its compression algorithms to create a more simplified model that significantly increases computation efficiency.

“Through our collaboration with NAVER, we will develop cutting-edge semiconductor solutions to solve the memory bottleneck in large-scale AI systems,” said Jinman Han, Executive Vice President of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “With tailored solutions that reflect the most pressing needs of AI service providers and users, we are committed to broadening our market-leading memory lineup including computational storage, PIM and more, to fully accommodate the ever-increasing scale of data.”

“Combining our acquired knowledge and know-how from HyperCLOVA with Samsung’s semiconductor manufacturing prowess, we believe we can create an entirely new class of solutions that can better tackle the challenges of today’s AI technologies,” said Suk Geun Chung, Head of NAVER CLOVA CIC. “We look forward to broadening our AI capabilities and bolstering our edge in AI competitiveness through this strategic partnership.”

The achievement was based on Samsung’s restored financial performance, which is now near pre-pandemic levels, and higher demand for memory due to an increase in data usage. In 2021, Samsung scored a brand value growth of 20% compared to 2020 and this year, continues the double-digit growth. Samsung first entered the top 10 list in 2012, placing in ninth position, and has managed to rise in the chart each year, reaching sixth place in 2017 and fifth place in 2020.

“Samsung Electronics was able to record two consecutive years of double-digit growth in brand value, all thanks to the support from our global customers,” said YH Lee, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Samsung Electronics. “In return, the entire company will work together as a team to provide a better and more satisfying customer experience.”

Various Factors Evaluated by Interbrand To Build the Samsung Brand Value

At the end of 2021, Samsung Electronics merged its SET Division and created the Device eXperience Division to increase synergy among its products and provide a next level of experience to customers. Furthermore, Samsung also launched the Customer eXperience-Multi Device Experience Center to strengthen its multi-device connection experience.

Along with these measures, Samsung has integrated the SmartThings across its product categories, creating an inclusive ecosystem and a multi-device experience. SmartThings also empowers consumers to get the most out of their Samsung devices, as well as third-party products they may already own.

In addition, Samsung’s Future Generation Lab has been created to foster authentic conversations around the activities of the next generation. The insights from the lab have been applied to the products and marketing activities.

As well as innovative products based on consumer experiences, the development of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, automotive and robotics through consistent investment also played a role in Samsung’s growth.

Samsung’s Recognized Efforts in Each Product Division for a Better Customer Experience

Mobile

• Camera innovation of Galaxy S22 series based on customers’ insights, and Nightography campaign rollout Cementing leadership in the foldable mobile phone category
• Partnership with Google and Microsoft to strengthen users’ connected experience
• Respecting the value of user security and privacy through Samsung Knox

Network

• Pioneering network innovation path in virtualization and openness with large-scale commercial experiences
• Driving 5G industry with its market-leading 5G portfolio from RAN and Core to automation tools
• Realizing the ESG commitment through intelligent network solutions for energy efficiency

Visual Display

• Continuing innovation of premium TVs, including Micro LED, the Neo QLED 8K/4K
• Strengthening its product portfolio based on customers’ lifestyle, such as The Frame, The Freestyle
• Providing new gaming experiences to consumers, including the Samsung Gaming Hub and the Odyssey Ark

Home Appliances

• Expanding Bespoke product categories beyond kitchen to entire home including clothing care, floor care and air care
• Delivering sustainability values through its products (achieving high level of energy saving rate for major products, guaranteed warranties for digital inverter compressor, reduced microplastic emission from washing machines in collaboration with Patagonia)
• Creating excitement among Bespoke fans through participation-focused online and offline campaigns

Semiconductor

• Investing in next-generation technologies and production capabilities to ensure stable supplies for cutting-edge applications (constructing new $17B manufacturing line in Texas, KRW 20-trillion R&D complex in Giheung)
• Delivering industry-leading semiconductor innovations that enhance product performance and energy efficiency (industry’s first 3nm GAA mass production)
• Developing innovative memory solutions to address the explosive growth of data-intensive tasks in areas such as AI and ML (CXL memory, HBM-PIM, second-generation SmartSSD), and expanding strategic partnerships to tackle new industry challenges
• Pushing boundaries of logic solutions that can offer enhanced user experiences and new opportunities (5G Exynos Modem, Exynos 2200, 200MP ISOCELL HP3)

Interbrand’s Best Global Brands are listed according to the evaluation of each brand value, which is a result of comprehensive analysis of the financial performance of the company, the influence of the brand on customer purchases and brand competitiveness.

This year’s event, attended by more than 800 customers and partners, featured presentations from Samsung’s Memory and System LSI business leaders — including Jung-bae Lee, President and Head of Memory Business; Yong-In Park, President and Head of System LSI Business; and Jaeheon Jeong, Executive Vice President and Head of Device Solutions (DS) Americas Office — on the company’s latest advancements and its vision for the future.

System LSI Business Highlights

In the morning session of this year’s Tech Day, the System LSI Business emphasized its goal of becoming a ‘total solution fabless’ through maximizing the synergy between its unique and wide-range product lineup. As Samsung Electronics’ fabless IC design house, the System LSI Business currently offers around 900 products, which include SoC (System on Chip), image sensor, modem, display driver IC (DDI), power management IC (PMIC) and security solutions.

The System LSI Business not only makes leading individual products, but is also a total solution provider that can merge the various logic technologies into one platform, in order to deliver optimized solutions to customers.

“In an age that requires machines to learn and think as people do, the importance of logic chips, which play the roles of the brain, heart, nervous system and eyes, is growing to unprecedented levels,” said Yong-In Park, President and Head of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will converge and combine its technology embedded in various products like SoC, sensor, DDI and modem, in order to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a total solution provider.”

▲ Yong-In Park, President and Head of System LSI Business, is giving his keynote speech at Samsung Tech Day 2022.

A Vision of Chips With Human-Like Performance

The Fourth Industrial Revolution was a key theme in System LSI’s Tech Day sessions. The System LSI Business’ logic chips are crucial physical foundations of Hyper-Intelligence, Hyper-Connectivity and Hyper-Data, which are the key areas of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Samsung Electronics aims to enhance the performance of these chips to a level at which they can carry out human tasks just as well as people can.

With this vision in mind, the System LSI Business is focusing on improving the performance of its essential IP like NPU (Neural Processing Unit) and modem, as well as innovating CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) technology by collaborating with global industry leading companies.

The System LSI Business is also continuing its work on ultra-high resolution image sensors so that its chips can capture images as the human eye does, and also has plans for sensors that can play the role of all five of the human senses.

Next-Generation Logic Chips Showcased

Samsung Electronics revealed a number of advanced logic chip technology for the first time at the Tech Day booth, including 5G Exynos Modem 5300, Exynos Auto V920 and QD OLED DDI, which are essential parts of various industries such as mobile, home appliance and automotive.

Chips that were newly released or announced this year including the premium mobile processor Exynos 2200 were also on display, along with the 200MP ISOCELL HP3 — the image sensor with the industry’s smallest 0.56-micrometer (μm)-pixels. Built on the most advanced 4-nanometer (nm) EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) process and combined with cutting-edge mobile, GPU and NPU technology, the Exynos 2200 provides the finest experience for smartphone users. The ISOCELL HP3, with a 12 percent smaller pixel size than the predecessor’s 0.64μm, can enable an approximately 20 percent reduction in camera module surface area, allowing smartphone manufacturers to keep their premium devices slim.

Samsung showcased its ISOCELL HP3 in action by showing the attendees of Tech Day the picture quality of photographs taken with a 200MP sensor camera, as well as demonstrating the workings of System LSI’s fingerprint security IC for biometric payment cards that combines a fingerprint sensor, Secure Element (SE) and Secure Processor, adding an extra layer of authentication and security in payment cards.

Memory Business Highlights

In a year marking 30 years and 20 years of leadership in DRAM and NAND flash memory respectively, Samsung unveiled its fifth-generation 10nm-class (1b) DRAM as well as eighth- and ninth-generation Vertical NAND (V-NAND), affirming the company’s commitment to continue providing the most powerful combination of memory technologies over the next decade.

Samsung also emphasized how the company will demonstrate greater resilience through collaborative partnerships in the face of new industry challenges.

“One trillion gigabytes is the total amount of memory Samsung has made since its beginning over 40 years ago. About half of that trillion was produced in the last three years alone, indicating just how fast digital transformation is progressing,” said Jung-bae Lee, President and Head of Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “As advances in memory bandwidth, capacity and power efficiency enable new platforms and these, in turn, stimulate more semiconductor innovations, we will increasingly push for a higher level of integration on the journey toward digital coevolution.”

▲ Jung-bae Lee, President and Head of Memory Business, is giving his keynote speech at Samsung Tech Day 2022.

DRAM Solutions to Advance Data Intelligence

Samsung’s 1b DRAM is currently under development with plans for mass production in 2023. To overcome challenges in DRAM scaling beyond the 10nm range, the company has been developing disruptive solutions in patterning, materials and architecture, with technology like High-K material well underway.

The company then highlighted upcoming DRAM solutions such as 32Gb DDR5 DRAM, 8.5Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM and 36Gbps GDDR7 DRAM that will bring new capabilities to data center, HPC, mobile, gaming and automotive market segments.

Expanding beyond conventional DRAM, Samsung also underscored the importance of tailored DRAM solutions such as HBM-PIM, AXDIMM and CXL that can fuel system-level innovation in better handling the explosive growth of data worldwide.

1,000+ V-NAND Layers by 2030

Since its inception a decade ago, Samsung’s V-NAND technology has progressed through eight generations, bringing 10 times the layer count and 15 times the bit growth. Samsung’s most recent, 512Gb eighth-generation V-NAND features a bit density improvement of 42%, attaining the industry’s highest bit density among 512Gb triple-level cell (TLC) memory products to date. The world’s highest capacity 1Tb TLC V-NAND will be available to customers by the end of the year.

The company also noted that its ninth-generation V-NAND is under development and slated for mass production in 2024. By 2030, Samsung envisions stacking over 1,000 layers to better enable data-intensive technologies of the future.

As AI and big data applications drive the need for faster and higher-capacity memory, Samsung will continue to leapfrog bit density by accelerating the transition to quad-level cell (QLC), while further enhancing power efficiency in support of more sustainable customer operations worldwide.

More Far-Reaching Solutions Amidst Greater Collaboration

Samsung introduced an extensive portfolio of storage solutions spanning data center, enterprise server, mobile, client, consumer and automotive applications. The company highlighted its high-performance, low-power computational storage optimized for AI and how it can contribute to eco-conscious computing. Samsung also presented a new DRAM-less SSD, the PM9C1a, which supports both PCIe 4.0 and 5.0.

Samsung then shared aggressive plans to lead the industry in intelligent mobility solutions. The company discussed its wide-ranging memory offerings designed for every modern automotive function, from in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), autonomous driving (AD) and advanced driver assisted systems (ADAS), clusters and gateways to telematics. Since entering the automotive memory market in 2015, Samsung has been rapidly growing its market presence with the intent of becoming the largest automotive memory provider by 2025.

Reaffirming its overriding goals of enhancing customer value and pursuing a customer-oriented development philosophy, Samsung stressed its intent to further expand its ecosystem partnerships. To stimulate more widespread open innovation, Samsung revealed a key element of its blueprint for greater customer collaboration. The company will open a Samsung Memory Research Center (SMRC) where customers and partners can test and verify Samsung memory and software solutions in various server environments. Beginning with the opening of its first SMRC in Korea in the fourth quarter of this year, Samsung plans to later launch additional hubs in the U.S. and around the world, in collaboration with ecosystem partners like Red Hat and Google Cloud.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled an array of next-generation memory and storage technologies during Flash Memory Summit 2022, held at the Santa Clara (California) Convention Center, August 2-4. In a keynote titled “Memory Innovations Navigating the Big Data Era,” Samsung spotlighted four areas of technological advancement driving the big data market — data movement, data storage, data processing and data management — and revealed its leading-edge memory solutions addressing each field.

Petabyte Storage: Maximizing Server Utilization

To maximize data center efficiency in an increasingly data-driven world, Samsung introduced a next-generation storage technology, ‘Petabyte Storage.’ The new solution will allow a single server unit to pack more than one petabyte of storage, enabling server manufacturers to sharply increase their storage capacity within the same floor space with a minimal number of servers. High server utilization will also help to lower power consumption.

Memory-Semantic SSD: AI- and ML-Optimized Storage

Samsung announced its ‘Memory-semantic SSD’ that combines the benefits of storage and DRAM memory. Leveraging Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect technology and a built-in DRAM cache, Memory-semantic SSDs can achieve up to a 20x improvement in both random read speed and latency when used in AI and ML applications. Optimized to read and write small-sized data chunks at dramatically faster speeds, Samsung’s Memory-semantic SSDs will be ideal for the growing number of AI and ML workloads that require very fast processing of smaller data sets.

Telemetry: Enabling More Reliable Data Center Management

As SSDs become more widely adopted in data centers, technology to manage these storage drives with the highest degree of reliability is becoming increasingly critical. Samsung’s telemetry technology gathers human-readable metadata from key components inside customers’ SSDs such as NAND flash and DRAM as well as SSD controllers and firmware. Based on this broad set of telemetry information, data centers can detect and prevent any potential problems ahead of time, enabling a more reliable and efficient operation.

Updates to Prior Milestones

Additionally, Samsung informed its keynote audience of important product updates to previously-announced mobile storage and high-performance SSD milestones.

The industry’s first UFS 4.0 mobile storage, developed by Samsung in May, is scheduled to enter mass production this month. The new UFS 4.0 will be a critical component in flagship smartphones that require large amounts of data processing for features like high-resolution images and graphics-heavy mobile games, and will later be used in mobility, VR and AR.

Samsung also announced market availability of two enterprise SSDs. Its PM1743, a CES 2022 Innovation Awards honoree, is the industry’s first PCIe 5.0 SSD, while the PM1653 is the first 24G SAS SSD, both now in mass production. The company further highlighted its paradigm-shifting SmartSSD and CXL DRAM, which have been designed to avoid bottlenecks in current memory and storage architectures.

“The IT industry is facing a new set of challenges brought on by the explosive growth in big data, and this underscores the importance of a robust, cross-industry ecosystem,” said Jin-Hyeok Choi, keynote speaker and executive vice president of Memory Solution & Product Development at Samsung Electronics. “We are committed to developing transformative memory technologies that can bring far-reaching changes in how we move, store, process and manage data for future AI, ML and HPC applications, as we navigate these challenging tides together with industry partners.”

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, and Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a broad collaboration on software technologies for next-generation memory solutions. The partnership will focus on the development and validation of open source software for existing and emerging memory and storage products, including NVMe SSDs; CXL memory; computational memory/storage (HBM-PIM, Smart SSDs) and fabrics — in building an expansive ecosystem for closely integrated memory hardware and software.

The exponential growth of data driven by AI, AR and the fast-approaching metaverse is bringing disruptive changes to memory designs, requiring more sophisticated software technologies that better link with the latest hardware advancements.

“Samsung and Red Hat will make a concerted effort to define and standardize memory software solutions that embrace evolving server and memory hardware, while building a more robust memory ecosystem,” said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President and Head of the Memory Application Engineering Team at Samsung Electronics. “We will invite partners from across the IT industry to join us in expanding the software-hardware memory ecosystem to create greater customer value.”

“In the upcoming data-centric era, the integration of memory-centric hardware and software architectures will become increasingly essential, and for this purpose, Red Hat is happy to participate in the joint undertaking with Samsung,” added Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice President and Head of Red Hat Asia Pacific.

The new partnership marks the first time that Samsung has joined forces with an open source software company to foster engagements across the IT marketplace. As an extension to this strategic collaboration, Samsung will launch the Samsung Memory Research Cloud (SMRC), where the two companies will develop and verify software solutions on diverse server environments.

Serving as an open collaboration hub, the SMRC will enable customers and partners to evaluate new software products in configuring optimal combinations with memory hardware.

The companies will also participate in open source communities such as the Linux Foundation, to ensure that their software technology has full support in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and with other open source software stacks.

Samsung plans to open its SMRC platform in the second half of this year and expects it to act as an ongoing catalyst for innovation in future IT systems.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced its development of the industry’s first 512-gigabyte (GB) Compute Express Link (CXL) DRAM, taking an important step toward the commercialization of CXL which will enable extremely high memory capacity with low latency in IT systems.

Since introducing the industry’s first CXL DRAM prototype with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) controller in May 2021, Samsung has been working closely with data center, enterprise server and chipset companies to develop an improved, customizable CXL device.

The new CXL DRAM is built with an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) CXL controller and is the first to pack 512GB of DDR5 DRAM, featuring four times the memory capacity and one-fifth the system latency over the previous Samsung CXL offering.

“CXL DRAM will become a critical turning point for future computing structures by substantially advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and big data services, as we aggressively expand its usage in next-generation memory architectures including software-defined memory (SDM),” said Cheolmin Park, Vice President of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics, and Director of the CXL Consortium. “Samsung will continue to collaborate across the industry to develop and standardize CXL memory solutions, while fostering an increasingly solid ecosystem.”

“As an active member of the CXL Consortium, Lenovo is committed to developing this important standard and helping build the ecosystem around the new CXL interconnect,” said Greg Huff, Chief Technology Officer, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. “We are excited to be part of Samsung’s CXL development program, working to foster the growth and adoption of innovative CXL products in future Lenovo systems.”

“CXL is a key technology that enables more innovative ways to manage memory expansion and pooling which will play an important role in next-generation server platforms,” said Christopher Cox, Vice President of Strategic Technology at Montage Technology. “Montage is excited to continue partnering with Samsung to help the CXL ecosystem expand rapidly.”

In recent years, the growth of the metaverse, AI and big data has been generating explosive amounts of data. However, conventional DDR design limits the scaling of memory capacity beyond the tens of terabyte range, requiring an entirely new memory interface technology like CXL.

The large pool of memory that is shared between CXL and main memory allows a server to expand its memory capacity to tens of terabytes, and at the same time increase its bandwidth to several terabytes per second.

Samsung’s 512GB CXL DRAM will be the first memory device that supports the PCIe 5.0 interface and will come in an EDSFF (E3.S) form factor — especially suitable for next-generation high-capacity enterprise servers and data centers.

Later this month, Samsung plans to unveil an updated version of its open-source Scalable Memory Development Kit (SMDK). The toolkit is a comprehensive software package that allows the CXL memory expander to work seamlessly in heterogeneous memory systems — enabling system developers to incorporate CXL memory into various IT systems running AI, big data and cloud applications, without having to modify existing application environments.

Samsung will begin sampling its 512GB CXL DRAM with customers and partners for joint evaluation and testing in the third quarter of this year, and plans to have the memory ready for commercialization as next-generation server platforms become available. As a member of the CXL Consortium Board of Directors, Samsung is openly collaborating with many global data center, server and chipset vendors to deliver next-generation interface technologies that can bring highly tangible benefits to the IT industry.

COVID-19 has sped up digital transformation by several years, and advances in AI technology have sped right along with it, leading to a significant increase in demand for AI. Large-scale adoption of AI is already taking place in key industries, from the automotive sector and finance to healthcare and education, as seen through innovations like self-driving cars and chatbots. At the same time, the range of applications for AI is expanding fast, driving impressive advancements in areas like image processing, speech recognition, and natural language processing.

A New Memory Solution for the AI Era

In recent years, as data throughput has increased rapidly, it’s stressed the limits of existing computing systems. AI data throughput has been rising tenfold each year,¹ and current computing systems don’t offer memory capacities large enough to handle the sharp increase in data volumes.

Currently, a central processing unit (CPU) can hold up to 16 DRAMs (a maximum of 8 terabytes (TB)) — a number far smaller than what’s needed to handle the massive stores of data used in AI and machine learning. The need for a memory platform that supports fast interfaces and easy scalability is becoming all the more clear as the age of AI draws ever nearer. Recently, a new DRAM module based on Compute Express Link (CXL) has emerged as a promising memory solution for the AI era. So too have processing-in-memory (PIM) and computing storage equipped with a memory-based AI processor.

CXL: An Interface Pushing the Boundaries of Memory Capacity and Server Flexibility

What makes CXL a next-generation memory platform and such a promising solution to current computing limitations? In short: scalability.

CXL is a new interface that’s designed to enhance the efficiency of a computing system’s memory, CPU and graphics processing unit (GPU). In conventional platforms, devices like memory and storage have their own interfaces that link them to the CPU. But going through all these different interfaces to communicate with one another creates latency, slowing down operations. And with the massive growth in data being used for AI and machine learning, latency issues have only gotten worse.

CXL is part of a next-generation interface that will be applied to PCIe 5.0. By integrating multiple existing interfaces into one, directly connecting devices and enabling them to share memory, CXL addresses those limitations and creates new data pathways that are faster and more efficient. This next-generation memory solution is the reason why CXL has been receiving so much attention.

In line with this trend, in May of 2021, Samsung Electronics introduced the CXL Memory Expander, a first-of-its-kind CXL-based software development solution, and began promoting CXL memory solutions. The main advantages of CXL are as follows:

• Unrivaled Memory Expansion

Similar to a solid state drive (SSD), which is an external storage device, the CXL Memory Expander enables DRAM capacity to be expanded when installed in the location where the SSD is inserted. In other words, it enables an IT system’s DRAM capacity to be expanded simply by improving the interface and without having to modify the existing server structure or change it altogether.

• Streamlined Data Handling

A key benefit of the Memory Expander is its efficient data processing. By expanding higher bandwidth, it enables different devices to share memory and leverage their resources more effectively. They can then use the accelerator’s memory as if it were main memory by sharing common memory areas. Devices without their own internal memory can also take advantage of that main memory and use it as their own.

• Accelerated Computing Speed

Minimizing latency issues (or delays) caused by increases in data throughput is a key function of the CXL Memory Expander. The Memory Expander leverages both the accelerator and the CPU to improve system computing speeds, supporting much smoother and more rapid data processing.

As it stands, many in the industry are still unfamiliar with the concept of the CXL interface. Although the technology is still in its early stages, its potential to drive more efficient data processing is pushing it to be viewed as a driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In preparation for the rapidly approaching AI era, Samsung Electronics will help expand the CXL ecosystem by introducing everything from CXL memory hardware to a software solution called the Scalable Memory Development Kit (SMDK), and will lead the market with next-generation memory solutions that are capable of accommodating the fast-evolving landscape of data processing.

¹ Source: OpenAI (2019)

The CXL interconnect is an open, industry-backed standard that enables different types of devices such as accelerators, memory expanders and smart I/O devices to work more efficiently when processing high-performance computational workloads.

“In order for data center and enterprise systems to smoothly run next-generation memory solutions like CXL, development of corresponding software is a necessity,” said Cheolmin Park, Vice President of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. “Today, Samsung is reinforcing its commitment toward delivering a total memory solution that encompasses hardware and software, so that IT OEMs can incorporate new technologies into their systems much more effectively.”

CXL Memory Adoption Made Easier Without the Need for Application Modifications

Samsung’s SMDK enables the main memory and the CXL memory expander to work together seamlessly in heterogeneous memory systems. The extensive software kit consists of libraries — sets of pre-built, reusable codes — and application programming interfaces (APIs) — the connections to access these software codes. Using the SMDK, system developers can easily incorporate CXL memory into advanced IT systems without having to modify existing application environments, or alternatively use it to optimize application software settings to suit special system needs.

Industry’s First Software-Defined Memory Management

The new SMDK also supports memory virtualization, allowing system designers to efficiently manage an expanded memory pool in shared memory architectures. Leveraging a proprietary Intelligent Tiering Engine, the SMDK can identify and configure the memory type, capacity and bandwidth that are most appropriate for each use case.

Samsung’s SMDK is now available on a limited basis for initial testing and optimization and will be open-sourced within the first half of next year. Samsung will continue to enhance its open-source SMDK as it closely collaborates with industry leaders in expanding adoption of the CXL memory platform for broad use in AI, edge and cloud applications.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled the industry’s first memory module supporting the new Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect standard. Integrated with Samsung’s 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 process 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 I/O devices, while expanding memory capacity and bandwidth well beyond what is possible today. Samsung has been collaborating with several data center, server and chipset manufacturers to develop next-generation interface technology 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,” said Cheolmin Park, vice president of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to raise the bar with memory interface innovation and capacity scaling to help our customers, and the industry at-large, better manage the demands of larger, more complex, real-time workloads that are key to AI and the data centers of tomorrow.”

Dr. Debendra Das Sharma, Intel Fellow and Director of I/O Technology and Standards at Intel said, “Data center architecture is rapidly evolving to support the growing demand and workloads for AI and ML, and CXL memory is expected to expand the use of memory to a new level. We continue to work with industry companies such as Samsung to develop a robust memory ecosystem around CXL.”

Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD, added, “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.”

Unlike conventional DDR-based memory, which has limited memory channels, Samsung’s CXL-enabled DDR5 module can scale memory capacity to the terabyte level, while dramatically reducing system latency caused by memory caching.

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 the CXL-based memory and utilize it as the main memory.

Samsung’s new module has been successfully validated on next-generation server platforms from Intel, signaling the beginning of an era for high-bandwidth, low latency CXL-based memory using the latest DDR5 standard. Samsung is also working with data center and cloud providers 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.