Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 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. 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.