CXL Memory as Persistent Memory for Disaggregated HPC: A Practical Approach
Yehonatan Fridman, Suprasad Mutalik Desai, Navneet Singh, Thomas Willhalm, Gal Oren · 2023
In the landscape of High-Performance Computing (HPC), the quest for efficient and scalable memory solutions remains paramount. The advent of Compute Express Link (CXL) introduces a promising avenue with its potential to function as a Persistent Memory (PMem) solution in the context of disaggregated HPC systems. This paper presents a comprehensive exploration of CXL memory’s viability as a candidate for PMem, supported by physical experiments conducted on cutting-edge multi-NUMA nodes equipped with CXL-attached memory prototypes. Our study not only benchmarks the performance of CXL memory but also illustrates the seamless transition from traditional PMem programming models to CXL, reinforcing its practicality.