What’s CXL? The Alternative Memory Technology Embraced by Google, Nvidia

The global memory chip shortage sparked by the AI boom has prompted companies including Google and Nvidia to spend more effort on alternatives that could ease the supply crunch. One of them is a technology that allows servers to share memory across a data center.

The technology, Compute Express Link, or CXL, is seven years old but was slow to take off until recently, in part because it slows down data transfers, the process by which a processor fetches information from memory to perform calculations. In AI workloads, processors are constantly pulling in fresh data, so even small delays can slow down an entire system. 

Despite that issue, the rising cost of memory chips is forcing companies to try different techniques. For instance, Google has begun to deploy the CXL technology in its data centers, according to two employees, and its move could prompt other companies to follow suit.