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YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGcU51nJRi4
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Hi, everybody. It's Geof Findley from Montage. Just want to take the next 15 minutes with you and talk to you guys about CXL technology, where Montage is at with the technology, and some real-life applications today for CXL.Briefly about myself, I've been in the industry for about 30 years. I've been at Montage for about six and a half years, where I run sales and business development. Prior to that, I did 19 years at Intel, where I was running the memory enabling team.But this presentation isn't about me. It's about CXL. So let's just jump right in and hit the foils.So what we're going to do is talk about a use case. Today, the biggest usage of CXL is probably the reuse of DDR4. So I'm going to talk about that as we go through the presentation.

So who is Montage? Montage is a leading company that's been in the business for about 20 years. We are a leading company in the DDR4, DDR5 interface chips.So temp sensors, SPD, registers, data buffers. We have expanded into doing retimers. A couple years ago, we have a Gen 4 product, a Gen 5 product, and a Gen 6 product in the works.So we see the CXL really as the merging of memory products, which is the strongest value proposition for CXL today, and PCI. So with us already strong in the memory product portfolio and the PCI, CXL is just kind of a really good merger for us in thoes spaces.So we've got strong shipments worldwide on our CXL controllers, and we've got design wins with all the key customers.We really also want to make sure that we focus on what does our customers want today, and what does our customers want in the future? So I'll talk a little bit about that with our portfolio.So the technology is available today, and it's only getting better as we move forward.

So today, we're seeing two usage models of CXL today. And again, this is similar to what you'll see from a company like Montage.But Astera Labs also has this in this space. You've got an add-in card where you can take your existing technology, such as DDR4, and plug it into an add-in card.It will convert that to a PCI interface that's hidden behind to the end user so that they can take their existing inventory of DDR4.In the case of a CSP, they might have hundreds of thousands of these DDR4 modules.And with CXL, they can now.Use that behind the controller behind.So your latest Intel, AMD, and Ampere systems that only support DDR5, this is a way to back in, you can still use your DDR4 on those systems.So that's with the add-in card option.The second form factor that we're seeing today is with an E3 module.And this is for companies like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.They're probably the three biggest ones in this area.So they'll take the controller.They'll.Add it on to a PCB.Most of them are doing a DDR5 derivative, but you could also do a DDR4 derivative.And then they'll put raw DRAM chips on those E3 modules.And then you can plug that right into a spare PCI slot.So those are the two biggest options today, an add-in card or an E3 module today.Going forward, and this is kind of the holy grail, this is where you see the CXL pooling really take off.And that really needs your CXL.CXL 3.1 or 3.0 technology.You'll need the latest, the newer Intel platforms, the newer AMD platforms and others in the industry.So this is probably a year plus out, but it's all being worked now.The specs are done.Companies such as Montage are in the process of taping out its chips.Switch vendors are already there.So the ecosystem is all starting to come together.And you'll see this roll out next year for mass production, probably late 25, early 26.And this is the pooling solution.I'll talk more about that coming forward.

So most people want to know how big is the market?What's my opportunity today?And a lot of us are ex-Intel people where we use the crawl, walk, run scenario.So we're moving from the crawl phase to the walk phase.We see that transition taking place with CXL 3, where we really start seeing a lumber of value propositions that resonate today when that CXL 3.0 comes out. So today we're in the crawl phase. Montage is doing what it can to enable the industry with add-in cards, with EVB cards, and with support for our controller for companies like Samsung and SK Hynix, where you can get instant bandwidth and instant capacity.So the market today is not very big, but as we transition to CXL 3.0 and as we transition to future usage models, you can see from these curves, the volumes just start increasing quarter on quarter, year on year. And in the 26, 27 time period, we've got that hockey stick where it really takes off. 

The next opportunity for CXL, really, it has a play in the bandwidth area. It also has a play in the capacity area, and then it has a play in the pooling area.The difficult thing that's happened is there's other technologies that are in place that are affecting the overall share of the market, we'll call it. So originally, 32 gigabit was going to be very slow to ramp in the industry. But with the AI and the core wars happening, we're seeing an acceleration of 32 gigabit technology, which is driving 128 gigabyte DIMMs.So that is really accelerated. You can get 32 gigabit from all of the suppliers. You can get 128 gigabyte RDIMMs from all of the suppliers. So that value proposition in the bandwidth play or in the capacity play has diminished a little bit today because of the acceleration of 32 gigabit, and that's affecting some of the volumes.The second vector that CXL had a very strong play in was around bandwidth. So it's still there today.You can plug in and get the bandwidth. I'll show some of the charts coming up where you can get up in one of the proposals we have or in one of the presentations we have. You get up to 72% improvement in that bandwidth. But you can also do it with an MRDIMM, which is coming out with Granite Rapid Systems. So my message today is there's a number of viable solutions that can solve your customers' needs. MRDIMM, 32 gigabit, CXL with capacity, CXL with bandwidth. And all of these have different value proposition pros and cons. And you need to really determine what's best for you today and what's best for you tomorrow. So you can see from these curves, more and more CXL is being implemented on the servers for expansion, and more and more is being implemented for the pooling. Pooling is a little bit further out because you need that CXL 3.0 solution, and you need the Intel and AMD platform support for that, which is coming in the 26 time period. 

The next two charts actually talk about units. Most people want to talk percentages or units. So these are the same charts and actually units. So you can see from the CXL expansion units. We're not talking billions, we're talking millions of units, but it really starts taking off in the 26, 27 time period. And then the pooling, same concept, it really starts to increase. We've got low growth and high growth. Again, a lot of that dictates the TCO.Where's the switches at? Are they going to be at a price point that's comfortable for the customers?Is it going to need to be the second generation of the switches to hit that TCO? On the expansion is, where's the sweet spot? Is it a 96 gig? Is it a 128? Is it a 256 expansion? So it's really dialing in where's the sweet spot to really tie into where the volumes make sense. 

Montage tries to make things easier for our customers. So as I mentioned earlier, we make a controller. We feel that we're the dominant player in that controller industry, but you can't do anything with a controller, right? It's like a paperweight. So we developed an add-in card that allows you to do your engineering work. We sell that today. We call it if you're interested, contact me or the montage representatives, and we can get you some of those add-in cards or EVB cards. We also want to make sure that you have the hooks so you can do your engineering work. We'll support both the DDR4 EVB card and a DDR5 EVB card. And then we want to make sure that if you want to work with various vendors, you have the opportunity to work with multiple vendors on this solution. 

We have two design wins with the biggest suppliers today, both Samsung and SK Hynix, they don't make a huge publicity that's Montage inside, kind of using the old Intel analogy, but we are the controller vendor that both Samsung and SK or Hynix are using. We've learned a lot with this partnership. We're making even more robust products as we go forward, making sure we get the hooks in there that they want, which we think you're also going to want. So we have a very robust solution. We've also got six design wins with smaller people making add-in cards. So you can go with the add-in card route, or you can go with the E3 route. 

This is a little bit more information on the EVB that you can get from us. Again, you can get a DDR4 version or a DDR5 version. This allows you to really start playing with CXL today. You can play with the existing memory modules that you have today from Samsung, Micron, or Hynix, or even Kingston from a DDR4 or DDR5 perspective. You can use RDIMMS, you can use UDIMMS. As long as you've ordered the right EVB, you can do various work from that solution. Going forward, we're looking at more vendors making these EVBs for us so that we have more depth and breadth in this. So please contact me if you need more information on who's the providers of these EVBs, how we can get more, what we can do with this solution that we have available to you today. But the key is we need to, as an industry, start working with this technology, start doing our hardware optimization, our software optimization, and we feel that this is a good vehicle to start doing that with.

Many of you guys have seen this chart before. I like to always joke with some of the old Intel people. This is kind of like the Optane chart, but we pulled out Optane and we put CXL in it.There's a lot of similarities between the two technologies. CXL has a lot of positives. It has a minor negatives or two with the latency that we're getting through and driving down the latency from that standpoint. There's some cost overhead with the controller. We're driving down the cost overhead as we get more products out there. But we see value in CXL as another tiered solution for bandwidth, for capacity, for bandwidth and capacity. It also allows you to, instead of over-provisioning your memory, you can under-provision your memory with the pooling and buy more cost-optimized memory solutions and then have a pooled solution that allows you to take advantage of that solution across multiple servers and lower your TCO. So this is our solution that we have today in the CXL space.We're already looking for input on our next generation of the product. So again, contact me if you have requests or requirements for the next generation. This is again CXL 3.

We talked about the design wins, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time, but we have solutions with all of the key suppliers today and then we want to work with you going forward. 

These are, okay, I want to see what's it like. What do I have? So again, we've partnered with MemVerge. They've got a great software suite of products.Because we're a hardware vendor. So in order to see something, you need some software vendors. So MemVerge has done a great job. In this example, we've got the Intel's latest system, Granite Rapids. We plugged in a memory module just so you can get it to work. And then what we did was we showed you can easily take an existing Granite Rapids system, plug in an E3 module from Samsung, an E3 module from SK Hynix. In this case, we've done a 96 gig module from SK Hynix. We've done 128 gig module from Samsung. We've plugged it in there. They're working. No issues, no concern. Instantly get the bandwidth, instantly get the capacity that those provide. But the twist to all this is we also added an add-in card for CPU 1 and an add-in card for CPU 2. In there, we plugged a Micron DDR4 module in there. On one right next to the Samsung E3 module, which is DDR5. They work seamlessly, no problems. And then on the other side with this SK Hynix solution, then the DDR5 DIMM in next to that. So what we're trying to show is we have the ability to support both DDR4 and DDR5 at the same time. We have the ability to support both Samsung, Micron, and Hynix at the same time. We don't have blue wires. We don't have special software. It's all working seamlessly. And we were able to increase the bandwidth almost 10x. We were able to increase the capacity, let's see, 5x. Right off the bat, easy, off-the-shelf solution.There's nothing special to get this to work. And we instantly got more bandwidth and more capacity with multiple vendors all working seamlessly at the same time. So again, if you want to see this demo, let me know. We can show this to you. You can call into the system and see it. But it's ready.It works. Nothing special. No tricks. No smoke and mirrors. It's all working today.

The second example we have for you is what we did was we took one of the older SPECOMP 2012, we just plugged in Archercity, which is an older system from Intel, test platform system. I think it's Sapphire Rapids. It might be Emerald Rapids. It doesn't change too much. But we plugged one memory module in there. And we said, OK, we've got one 64-gig module.Now we're going to plug in an add-in card. And we're going to plug in one 32-gig module from Samsung. And we're going to see what happens. So the blue is the baseline of these different applications. And many of these are fluid dynamic applications, whether it's another one of them is a weather prediction application. And you can see we were able to with just adding one 32-gig module, we were able to get a 32% to 72% improvement in these applications by adding just one more memory module via an add-in card right there. Again, nothing special was done. You can show these applications. And again, if you have more questions or comments, please see me afterwards. And we can talk more about this application or your application and how you can take advantage of CXL. 

So I think that's it from my standpoint. Now's the time to invest. Now's the time to play with it. It's real. It's not smoke and mirrors. It's production parts from Samsung, production parts from Hynix, production parts from Micron, production controllers from Montage. You can get E3 modules. You can get add-in cards. You need to get it. You need to start playing with it. And we're ready for you. So thanks for the time. Signing off from Montage.Bye.