Compute Express Link™ (CXL™) is an industry supported cache-coherent interconnect for processors, memory expansion and accelerators. This September marks the first anniversary of the incorporation of the CXL™ Consortium which was launched by industry leaders to drive adoption and continue the advancement of CXL technology. This first year has seen a number of significant milestones as we continue to make great progress on the CXL specification.
Notable highlights from this past year include:
Membership Momentum
Initially, we started the CXL consortium with nine members and we have received broad industry support enabling us to grow to over 125 members strong. We also established industry liaisons with DMTF, the Gen-Z Consortium and SNIA.
Specification Development
The CXL 1.0 specification was released in March 2019 along with the announcement of the intent to incorporate the consortium. The CXL 1.1 specification was then released six months later in conjunction with incorporation. It included errata fixes to the CXL 1.0 specification and a new compliance chapter that defines how interoperability testing between the host processor and an attached CXL device can be performed. The Technical Task Force members are now working on the next generation of CXL specifications to address additional usage models beyond the CXL 1.1 specification while maintaining backward compatibility. For access to the intermediate specifications, we strongly encourage you to get involved with the CXL Consortium and the Technical workgroups.
Available Educational Resources
Our members are continuing to develop new resources to educate developers and end-users through webinars, blog posts and industry speaking engagements. Additionally, we held our first members-only virtual technical training on the CXL 1.1 specification and the in-progress CXL 2.0 specification. The CXL 1.1 technical training materials are now available to the public – you can access the training materials here.
Join Us
The CXL Consortium offers two membership levels, Contributor or Adopter. You can learn more about the benefits of becoming a member here or email admin@computeexpresslink.org for more information.
We’re excited about what this next year will bring! I encourage you to stay up to date by following us on Twitter and LinkedIn. To be notified about upcoming webinars, sign up on the CXL Consortium BrightTalk channel.