Introducing Micron CZ122 and Red Hat certification of memory expansion portfolio

Micron, a leader in advanced memory and storage solutions, is proud to announce the availability of qualification samples of its latest Compute Express Link^™ (CXL^™) 2.0 based memory expansion module, the Micron CZ122. Alongside this exciting milestone, Micron is also announcing that both the CZ122 and its predecessor, the CZ120, have achieved certification with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux^® version 9.3 operating system. These milestones underscore Micron's leadership in delivering high-quality, high-performance products to hyperscalers and enterprise data centers.

The CZ122 module offers up to 256GB of memory capacity and 37GB/s of memory bandwidth¹, providing significant advancements in hardware-based heterogeneous interleaving, reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS), and security features. Both the CZ122 and CZ120 have been rigorously tested with AMD and Intel CPU platforms and with server OEMs; and are certified with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This certification marks a critical step in the development of the CXL ecosystem, paving the way for production-ready solutions to accelerate next-generation workloads and support new composable data center architectures.
 

Key benefits of Red Hat Device Certification for Micron CZ120 and CZ122

• Seamless integration: Certified for compatibility with the RHEL 9.3 OS.
• Optimized performance: Enhanced memory-tiering support via the latest RHEL 9.3 OS Linux^® kernel.
• Multi-tenancy: Support for KVM and QEMU applications for both memory allocation and management across virtual machines.
   

Announcing Micron CZ122 memory expansion module
 

Paving the way toward production, Micron is sampling the CZ122, its second memory expansion module. The CZ122 is an evolution of the CZ120, adding hardware-based heterogeneous interleaving for better system-level performance, additional RAS, improved security features, and enhanced manageability.
 

Key features of the Micron CZ122 memory expansion module

• Hardware-based heterogeneous interleaving provides customers with a better out-of-the-box experience to achieve optimal system-level performance with CXL.
• BIOS configurability enables interleaving of data across native memory and CXL memory.
• Deployment requires no changes to applications.
• Enhanced management, RAS and security features.
• White glove support for integration of CXL-based solutions into your data center environment through our Technology Enablement Program (TEP). 

Exciting use cases for CXL
 

Beyond ecosystem collaboration for product deployment, Micron is focused on enabling exciting and pervasive use cases that translate into strong total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits. As showcased at the Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) conference, Micron and partners have demonstrated three powerful use cases for CXL:

• LlamaIndex framework: CXL memory can be used to accelerate a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) workload.
• Neural Speed framework: CXL memory can be used to accelerate an Intel CPU-based inferencing workload.
• RocksDB application: With the H3 Platform memory chassis and Micron’s proposed Famfs contribution to the Linux open source kernel, memory pooling and sharing behind the CXL 2.0 switch can be realized. Micron’s Famfs enhancements expose the CXL memory as a shared file system to multiple servers or VMs running the RocksDB application.
   

In our collaborations, we have gained valuable insight into the benefits of CXL in these workloads . We also have focused on delivering these use cases as references with enterprise-ready hardware and/or software solutions and providing a path to production deployments.

Going forward, the following are some of the top areas of focus for Micron:

• Modular RAG: Continue refinement of the RAG data pipeline towards a Modular RAG system requiring more substantial memory and storage.
• CXL memory in storage networks: Flexible and scalable method to add large memory pools used as read and write cache buffers in SAN systems to improve its average latency and throughput.
• CXL memory pooling and sharing: Analysis of the implementations, performance, and TCO benefits of pooling and sharing large capacities of memory, either directly attached or behind a CXL switch.
  
  

The release of the Micron CZ122 module marks an important moment in the evolution of CXL-based memory expansion technology. With its advanced features, seamless integration and robust performance, along with the CZ120 in volume production and shipping to customers, Micron remains an industry leader of memory expansion solutions.

As we continue to innovate and collaborate with our ecosystem partners, we are excited to see the transformative impact this technology will have on data center operations.

For more updates and insights as we embark on this journey to push the boundaries of what's possible with CXL 2.0, we invite you to visit our webpage.