South Korean memory chip maker SK hynix said Monday it has sampled the first memory product under the compute express link memory interface, a concept considered a game-changer in the electronics industry that is facing memory storage bottleneck.

The announcement heralds SK hynix‘s long-awaited move to enter the market and roll out expandable CXL memory products for servers by 2023, according to the world’s second-largest DRAM chip maker.

CXL is a newly-emerging semiconductor standard known to be increasing the efficiency in performance of processors, accelerators and memory products, as the concept of high performance computing systems in the field of artificial intelligence and big data related applications is under the spotlight.

“(SK hynix) aim to mass-produce CXL memory products by 2023,“ Kang Uk-song, head of DRAM product planning of SK hynix, said in a statement.

”... (SK hynix) will continue to develop cutting-edge DRAM technologies and advanced packaging technologies to launch various CXL-based bandwidth and capacity expandable memory solution products.”

According to SK hynix, the sampled product is a 96-gigabyte memory expander that is composed of 24-gigabit double data rate 5 DRAM.

The CXL-based chip products provide a processor chip with the new pools of short-term memory capacity without unnecessary costs and complexities, as opposed to a chip architecture solely composed of memory chips.

SK hynix added that it also developed the Heterogeneous Memory Software Development Kit, a kit that monitors the workloads of different grades of memory under a CXL-based system, and distribute it to the public in the fourth quarter.

Earlier in May, memory chip rival Samsung Electronics unveiled the 512-gigabyte CXL-based memory module product, a year after introducing the industry‘s first CXL-based DRAM prototype.

(consnow@heraldcorp.com)