Intel’s Sapphire Rapids and AMD’s EPYC Genoa processors are the first server-grade models to include Compute eXpress Link support, which should also come to desktops and laptops by 2025 at the soonest, according to estimates recently released by Team Red.
The Compute eXpress Link standard essentially allows add-in boards like GPUs or persistent memory devices like SSDs to access similar levels of bandwidth as the system RAM via PCIe pathways, thus considerably lowering latency and improving transfer speeds. For now, CXL is only seeing incipient adoption in the server market, since Intel’s Sapphire Rapids along with AMD’s EPYC Genoa are expected to cement industry support with PCIe 5.0-based specs, yet this technology should eventually make its way to consumer platforms, if AMD’s estimations are anything to go by. How soon? Probably not before 2025.
At AMD’s latest “Meet the Experts” webinar, the prospect of bringing CXL to desktop and laptop PCs was mentioned as AMD Senior Developer Manager Leah Schoeb explained why storage solutions do not currently have access to the memory bus:
That’s something that we’re looking at with technologies such as CXL. So you’ll find over the next, you know, three to five years, you’ll see it first in the server area, but you’ll find moving down into the client area, ways that we can make sure that memory and storage can communicate on the same bus through CXL.
Phison, the premier PCIe controller maker was present at the event through its Senior Manager of Technical marketing Chris Ramseyer, who specifically commented on the formation of a CXL ecosystem involving multiple industry giants:
[…] this will be another ecosystem-type project, where it’s not just going to be Phison and not just AMD putting this together. We’re all going to have to work together to do this, and these collaborations have really advanced PCs over the last few years […]
Knowing AMD’s CPU release cycles, the first processors incorporating dedicated CXL circuitry could release with the Zen 6 family some time in 2026. That would also be the time when CXL-enabled PCIe 6.0 specs will have seen some consumer adoption.
Bogdan Solca – Senior Tech Writer – 1865 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2017
I first stepped into the wondrous IT&C world when I was around seven years old. I was instantly fascinated by computerized graphics, whether they were from games or 3D applications like 3D Max. I’m also an avid reader of science fiction, an astrophysics aficionado, and a crypto geek. I started writing PC-related articles for Softpedia and a few blogs back in 2006. I joined the Notebookcheck team in the summer of 2017 and am currently a senior tech writer mostly covering processor, GPU, and laptop news.
Bogdan Solca, 2022-10-26 (Update: 2022-10-26)
