Montage Technology has announced the sampling of its CXL 3.1 Memory eXpander Controller (MXC, Part No. M88MX6852), a device compliant with the Compute Express Link (CXL) 3.1 Type 3 specification. The new controller aims to deliver high-bandwidth, low-latency memory expansion and pooling for next-generation data center servers, addressing memory scalability and performance challenges as outlined in Montage Technology’s official announcement.
The MXC controller integrates both CXL.mem and CXL.io protocols, and operates on a PCI Express (PCIe) 6.2 physical layer interface with data transfer rates up to 64 GT/s using an eight-lane configuration. It offers flexible multi-rate and multi-width support, including the capability to split into two four-lane ports. Internally, it features a dual-channel DDR5 memory controller running at speeds up to 8000 MT/s for efficient data movement between host CPUs and backend DRAM or DIMM modules.
For system management and security, Montage Technology reports that the controller uses dual RISC-V microprocessors functioning as an Application Processing Unit (APU) and Security Processing Unit (SPU). This combination supports dynamic DDR/CXL resource allocation, system event handling, and hardware-level security features. The controller also provides interfaces such as SMBus/I3C, SPI, and JTAG, aiming to simplify system integration and firmware updates.
The MXC comes in a 25 mm x 25 mm package and supports both EDSFF (E3.S) and PCIe add-in card (AIC) form factors. Montage Technology explicitly targets data center server deployments, all-flash arrays, and edge computing platforms. The company claims the controller defines a path to dynamic and elastic memory allocation across data centers, aiming to reduce total cost of ownership through memory pooling. A Reference Design Kit (RDK) is available to aid customer evaluation and development of CXL-enabled systems.
Quotes from Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, AMD, and Intel reinforce industry interest in CXL memory expansion technologies for data center, AI, and cloud computing use cases.
“CXL Memory expansion and tiering is a foundational technology for the future of data center computing, especially in enabling heterogeneous memory architectures,” said Raghu Nambiar, Corporate Vice President, Data Center Ecosystems and Solutions at AMD. “Montage’s CXL 3.1 strategy aligns with our long-term vision to drive transformative improvements in total cost of ownership for data center operators, while accelerating the adoption of memory tiering and expansion for AI and cloud workloads.”
Source: Montage Technology
