Samsung Electronics develops CXL-based next-generation DRAM memory technology for first time in industry

Samsung Electronics has secured the next-generation semiconductor technology leadership through the development of high-capacity, high-bandwidth DRAM technology that can dramatically improve the performance of data centers in terms of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data.

Samsung Electronics has verified the CXL-based DRAM memory developed this time on Intel's platform to secure the base technology for a large-capacity DRAM solution required by the next-generation data center, and expand cooperation with major global data centers and cloud companies.

Recently, as the number of applications using artificial intelligence (AI) and big data increases, the amount of data to be processed is overflowing.

However, with the existing DDR interface used by the current data centers and server platforms, there is a limit to the capacity of DRAM that can be installed in the system, and a new alternative to overcome this has been constantly required.

CXL is a newly proposed interface to more efficiently utilize accelerators, memory, and storage devices used with CPU (central processing unit) in high-performance computing systems, that can overcome physical limitations of memory capacity and dramatically increase DRAM capacity.

Samsung Electronics applied the EDSFF (Enterprise & Data Center SSD Form Factor), which is applied to large-capacity SSDs, to CXL DRAM for the first time in the industry. CXL DRAM can coexist with the main DRAM of the existing system and expand the memory capacity of the system to terabytes.

The controller of the existing DRAM only served as a simple buffer to temporarily store data, but Samsung Electronics applied cutting-edge controller technology to the CXL DRAM so make it possible for the customers who are actively using big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and in-memory databases, to use CXL DRAM.

The newly developed CXL DRAM controller has "memory mapping" and "interface converting" technologies, minimizing system errors and ensuring data reliability so that the computing system can use the main memory DDR DRAM and CXL DRAM with different interfaces. It supports "error management" that can minimize errors in the system and improve reliability of data. (ANI/Global Economic)