Micron Technology announced the availability of sample units of its Micron CZ120 memory expansion modules to customers and partners.
These modules are offered in 128GB and 256GB capacities, and they utilize the E3.S 2T form factor with a PCIe Gen5 x8 interface. The CZ120 modules are designed to enhance standard server systems by providing additional memory capacity and bandwidth.
The key features of the Micron CZ120 modules include a remarkable memory read/write bandwidth of up to 36GB/s and full support for the CXL 2.0 Type 3 standard, utilizing the Compute Express Link (CXL) standards. The modules leverage a dual-channel memory architecture and Micron’s high-volume production DRAM process, resulting in increased module capacity and enhanced bandwidth.
These modules are particularly beneficial for workloads that demand higher memory capacity, such as AI training and inference models, SaaS applications, in-memory databases, high-performance computing, and general-purpose compute workloads running on a hypervisor either on-premise or in the cloud.
Siva Makineni, vice president of the Micron Advanced Memory Systems Group, expressed their commitment to advancing the adoption of CXL memory with this CZ120 sampling milestone. He stated that by working collaboratively with the CXL ecosystem, they aim to facilitate faster acceptance of this new standard, catering to the ever-growing demands of data centers and their memory-intensive workloads.
Intel and AMD have also extended their support to Micron in testing and evaluating the CZ120 memory expansion module. Jim Pappas, director of Technology Initiatives at Intel, affirmed their collaboration to accelerate the industry initiative to establish and expand the CXL ecosystem. Mahesh Wagh, senior fellow of Server Systems Architecture at AMD, commended the successful history of collaboration with Micron and shared impressive results in TPC-H benchmark performance when using the CZ120 modules with AMD EPYC processors.
Customers and partners can enroll in Micron’s Technology Enablement Program (TEP), gaining access to world-class collaboration, quality, and support. The program offers hands-on support, technical resources, and engineering consultation to aid in the development of CXL-enabled designs and product evaluation.
The CXL-based memory expansion modules from Micron provide the flexibility to create servers with more memory capacity and low latency to meet the demands of various application workloads. The CZ120 modules offer up to 96 percent more database queries per day and 24 percent greater memory read/write bandwidth per CPU compared to servers using RDIMM memory alone.
With these modules, servers can have up to 2TB of incremental memory capacity, enabling improved performance and increased memory bandwidth without the need for additional servers. By optimizing compute and memory resources for enterprise and cloud applications, organizations can reduce capital and operating expenses for their data center applications.
