Smart Memory Controllers

The SMC 2100 smart memory controller is the second generation of our Compute Express Link™ (CXL)™ Type 3 memory controller. With added support for DDR5 and enhanced ECC support, the SMC 2100 series meets the growing memory bandwidth and capacity demands of data center workloads and next-generation CPUs and GPUs. These controllers expand DDR memory bandwidth and capacity to overcome the limitations of traditional parallel DDR interfaces.

The SMC 2100 series of smart memory controllers supports the CXL 1.1 and CXL 2.0 specifications, utilizing the CXL.mem sub-protocol for low-latency memory expansion and the CXL.io sub-protocol for management.

SMC 2100 controllers provide media independence with support for both DDR4 and DDR5, a reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a significant increase in low-latency DRAM memory bandwidth and capacity per CPU/GPU core. Take advantage of DDR4 and DDR5 support, excellent Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS), enhanced security and telemetry. By allowing modern CPUs to optimize application workloads, customers can have a lower total overall cost in data center deployments.

Typical applications for the SMC 2100 family include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), High-Performance Computing (HPC) and other applications that require increased number of memory channels to deliver more memory bandwidth and capacity.

The SMC 1000 8×25G serial memory controller enables CPUs and other compute-centric SoCs to utilize four times the memory channels of parallel attached DRAM within the same package footprint compared to DDR4. The SMC 1000 8×25G enables higher memory bandwidth and media independence for HPC, big data, AI and ML compute-intensive applications with ultra-low latency.

The SMC 1000 8×25G interfaces to the CPU via a narrow 8-lane differential Open Memory Interface (OMI)-compliant 25-Gbps interface and bridges to memory via a wide 72-bit DDR4 3200 interface. It supports three DDR4 data rates—DDR4-2666, DDR4-2933 and DDR4-3200—resulting in a significant reduction in the required number of host CPU or SoC pins per DDR4 memory channel. This allows for more memory channels and therefore increases the available memory bandwidth. The SMC 1000 8×25G also features an innovative low-latency design, which enables memory systems to have virtually the identical bandwidth and latency performance as comparable LRDIMM products.