Gen-Z Seeks to Share Memory, Lower Latencies

By Gary Hilson, EETimes (July 30, 2020)

Not to be confused with the demographic cohort that succeeds millennials, Gen-Z is a memory-semantic fabric architecture that’s at a point where it must better define how it fits within the greater scheme of specifications and standards, including the somewhat mature NVM Express and the emerging Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol that’s gaining traction in data centers.

Gen-Z uses memory-semantic communications to move data between memories on different components with minimal overhead, not only interconnecting memory devices, but also processors and accelerators, the latter of which are becoming increasingly popular for specific use cases — storage and artificial intelligence, for example — while taking pressure of the CPU. Ultimately, Gen-Z is about more flexibility and responsiveness when it comes to resource provisioning and sharing, allowing systems to be reconfigured as the demands of applications for different resources change.

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