CXL 1.1 vs. CXL 2.0 – What’s the difference?

Compute Express Link™ (CXL™) is a high-speed interconnect offering coherency and memory semantics using high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity between host processor and devices such as accelerators, memory buffers, and smart I/O devices. The CXL 1.1 specification introduced and defined the CXL I/O protocol, memory protocol, and coherency interface. The CXL 2.0 specification adds support for switching for fan-out to connect to more devices; memory pooling for increased memory utilization efficiency and providing memory capacity on demand; and support for persistent memory.

This webinar will share a high-level overview of CXL 1.1, and the enhancements made in CXL 2.0 focusing on switching, memory pooling, Single Logical Devices (SLD) vs. Multiple Logical Devices (MLD), and fabric management. The presentation will also explore managed hot-plug, memory QoS telemetry, speculative reads, and security enhancements.

Follow us for updates!

[etp]

I wonder if CXL 2.0 would be able to be used to create a virtual machine that runs a single kernel that runs on all hardware as though it were one giant system. Not that I can think of a use case for this, it is just fascinating.