CXL™ Consortium member company SK hynix recently participated in a Q&A to discuss the development of the next-generation memory solutions, participation in CXL Consortium workgroups and how CXL enables memory capacity expansion. Find the full Q&A with SK hynix below.
Can you share a brief introduction of SK hynix?
SK hynix is a leading corporation for memory-based semiconductor solutions in the global IT industry. Since 1983, SK hynix has committed to develop high capacity, high speed, and ultra-power-saving memory and storage solutions such as DDR5, HBM3, and 176 layer 4D NAND. SK hynix is one of very few companies mass-producing both DRAM and NAND products. As a leader in the era of Memory-Centric Computing, SK hynix is also taking the lead in generating social value, expanding efforts for environmental preservation and practicing environment-friendly management for future generations.
Why did SK hynix decide to join the CXL Consortium?
SK hynix joined the CXL Consortium to prepare the development of next-generation memory solutions suitable for memory tiering, pooling and more. CXL is the emerging memory interface that will address the current challenge in meeting the demand for high-performance computing with higher capacity, and more efficient power in the memory sub-system.
What expertise does SK hynix bring to the consortium?
SK hynix brings world-class expertise in developing memory and storage technologies, with almost 40 years of experience. Worldwide, SK hynix develops and mass-produces various memory and storage products such as DDR5, LPDDR5, GDDR6, HBM2E, MCP, UFS3.1, and PCI Express® (PCIe®) 4.0 SSDs. SK hynix also provides leadership in memory standardization, as the first company to develop the DDR5 SDRAM based on the JEDEC standard.
What is the biggest advantage of CXL Consortium membership? How does SK hynix participate?
SK hynix strongly believes that becoming a CXL Consortium member is important. As a Consortium member, SK hynix is actively involved in the specification development for CXL memory solution, especially through activities in several technical workgroups to enable CXL protocol specification into actual development of CXL memory expansion. As a co-chair of the DRAM sub-group, SK hynix is strongly committed to contribute in the CXL standardization activities.
What use cases will be ideal targets for CXL technology? Which market segments will benefit from CXL?
CXL technology will ideally target memory expansion needs in datacenter applications, alongside AI and Machine Learning. Traditional memory interface such as DDRx is starting to meet limitations in expansion of bandwidth and capacity, especially on the capacity where higher interface speed limits the number of DDR modules to be placed under a single DDRx channel. Therefore, CXL will play a critical role in enabling memory capacity expansion as a complement to DDR, and also add value in bandwidth and persistence expansions. In the early stage of the ecosystem, the server and datacenter market segments will be the main segments benefiting from CXL. However, depending on the outcome of benefits provided by CXL such as Memory Expansion, Pooling, Near-Data Processing and Persistence, other market segments are likely to adopt CXL very soon.
What does SK hynix see as CXL’s impact within your industry?
CXL is a very important ingredient to realize true memory centric computing. The way emerging memory solutions are developed will change around the CXL ecosystem, including the interface, module, and the development process.
SK hynix’s vision as the memory solution provider is called Memory Forest (or Memory ForEST), where the IT industry ecosystem that needs insight-foresight, intelligence, information, and mass raw data, will thrive under several series of memory for Environment, Society, and Tomorrow (EST). Among all memory and storage portfolios from SK hynix such as DRAM, Storage-Class Memory, Computational and Storage SSDs, CXL memory is expected to play a major role in creating a new memory hierarchy and improve data efficiency, datacenter TCO, manufacturability, and eventually ESG (Environmental, Social Governance) values.
Interested in participating?
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