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Micron Launches Memory Expansion Module Portfolio to Accelerate CXL 2.0 Adoption

2023-08-07 | Return

Company helping to expand CXL ecosystem with its Technology Enablement Program

BOISE, Idaho, Aug. 07, 2023 Micron Technology, Inc., today announced sample availability of the Micron CZ120 memory expansion modules to customers and partners. The Micron CZ120 modules come in 128GB and 256GB capacities in the E3.S 2T form factor, which uses PCIe® Gen5 x8 interface. Additionally, the CZ120 modules are capable of running up to 36GB/s memory read/write bandwidth1 and augment standard server systems when incremental memory capacity and bandwidth is required. The CZ120 modules use Compute Express Link™ (CXL™) standards and fully support the CXL 2.0 Type 3 standard. By leveraging a unique dual-channel memory architecture and Micron’s high-volume production DRAM process, the Micron CZ120 delivers higher module capacity and increased bandwidth. Workloads that benefit from more memory capacity include AI training and inference models, SaaS applications, in-memory databases, high-performance computing and general-purpose compute workloads that run on a hypervisor on premise or in the cloud.

“Micron is advancing the adoption of CXL memory with this CZ120 sampling milestone to key customers,” commented Siva Makineni, vice president of the Micron Advanced Memory Systems Group. “We have been developing and testing our CZ120 memory expansion modules utilizing both Intel and AMD platforms capable of supporting the CXL standard. Our product innovation coupled with our collaborative efforts with the CXL ecosystem will enable faster acceptance of this new standard, as we work collectively to meet the ever-growing demands of data centers and their memory-intensive workloads.”

"To accelerate the industry initiative to establish and expand the CXL ecosystem, Intel is collaborating with Micron to test and evaluate their CZ120 memory expansion module on our 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors and Xeon platforms," said Jim Pappas, director of Technology Initiatives at Intel.

“AMD and Micron have had a long and successful history of collaboration. Since the introduction of our EPYC™ processors, we have validated Micron memory on multiple platforms powered by AMD EPYC processors. With the introduction of the CXL standard, we have extended our joint efforts to include the Micron CZ120 memory expansion module. We’ve recently tested our AMD EPYC 9754 processor with the CZ120 modules and are seeing impressive results in TPC-H benchmark performance compared to DRAM only,” said Mahesh Wagh, senior fellow of Server Systems Architecture at AMD.

Qualified customers and partners that enroll in the Micron Technology Enablement Program (TEP) can rely on Micron’s world-class collaboration, quality and support. Additional TEP benefits include hands-on support to aid in the development of CXL-enabled designs; technical resources such as data sheets, electrical and thermal models to aid in product development and evaluation; and engineering consultation related to signal integrity and other technical support topics.

Micron’s high-capacity, CXL-based memory expansion modules allow the flexibility to compose servers with more memory capacity and low latency to meet application workload demands, with up to 96% more database queries per day and 24% greater memory read/write bandwidth per CPU than servers using RDIMM memory alone.2 With 256GB Micron CZ120 memory expansion modules, independent software vendors, cloud service providers, original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers can build servers with up to 2TB of incremental memory capacity.3 Adding more capacity means better performance and increased memory bandwidth without the need for more servers. By improving the use of compute and memory resources for enterprise and cloud applications, organizations can reduce their capital and operating expenses for their data center applications.

Source: http://www.micron.com