CXL Memory as Persistent Memory for Disaggregated HPC: A Practical Approach
Yehonatan Fridman, Suprasad Mutalik Desai, Navneet Singh, Thomas, Willhalm, Gal Oren

TL;DR
This paper investigates the use of CXL memory as a practical persistent memory solution for disaggregated HPC systems, demonstrating its performance and ease of programming model transition through physical experiments and benchmarks.
Contribution
It provides the first comprehensive experimental evaluation of CXL memory as persistent memory in HPC, including a prototype implementation and performance benchmarking.
Findings
CXL memory can emulate PMem characteristics in HPC environments.
CXL-DDR4 modules achieve bandwidth comparable to local DDR4 memory.
Transitioning from traditional PMem programming models to CXL is straightforward.
Abstract
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. To substantiate our claims, we establish a tangible CXL prototype using an FPGA card embodying CXL 1.1/2.0 compliant endpoint designs (Intel FPGA CXL IP). Performance…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced Data Storage Technologies · Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques · Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems
