With first-generation chips now available, the early hype around CXL is giving way to realistic performance expectations. At the same time, software support for memory tiering is advancing, building on prior work around NUMA and persistent memory. Finally, operators have deployed RDMA to enable storage disaggregation and high-performance workloads. Thanks to these advancements, main-memory disaggregation is now within reach.  Enfabrica sponsored the creation of this white paper, but the opinions and analysis are those of the author. Download the full  white paper  for free, no registration required.

It's not often that we see a new interconnect come along that's a sure thing. By piggybacking on the PCI Express physical layer, however, CXL has become one of those rare birds. As is always the case with new technologies, it will take time for a multi-vendor ecosystem to mature. CXL offers many incremental steps along the architectural-evolution path, allowing the technology to ramp quickly while offering future iterations that enable truly composable systems. It All Starts with Server CPUs Although not officially launched, Intel's Sapphire Rapids is already shipping to early customers. Development platforms are also in partners' hands, enabling validation and testing of CXL components. AMD's Genoa is also about to launch with CXL support. The caveat for both vendors is that these first CPUs support only CXL 1.1, which lacks important features incorporated in the CXL 2.0 specification. Both versions ride atop PCIe Gen5, however, so the physical layer needn't ch...