CBD Proposed For The Linux Kernel: CXL Block Device

[phoronix]

Phoronix: CBD Proposed For The Linux Kernel: CXL Block Device

The latest Compute Express Link (CXL) feature work being pursued for the mainline Linux kernel is a driver to create CXL block devices for storage. On Monday a "request for comments" patch series sent out the initial code for setting up CXL shared memory to be used as Linux block devices...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-CBD-CXL-Block-Device

[Anux]

CBD Proposed For The Linux Kernel

Yes that kernel needs to take a smoke and relax.

[cl333r]

Yes that kernel needs to take a smoke and relax.

But at least he didn't forget to post the article, so there's that

[Weasel]

I want cheap CXL RAM disks... like they used to say you could get 512GB of cheap DDR2 RAM modules for CXL awhile ago. What happened to that?

[pegasus]

I've been asking our vendors for boxes with cxl memory for years now and they don't even have cxl 1.1 boxes ready ... Disaggregated rack-level cxl stuff is then 3-5 years away in practice.
But first cxl memory modules are now being talked about so fingers crossed we'll be able to get some bigmem boxes still in this year.

[S.Pam]

Cool idea. PCI express links as network and storage infrastructure.

[EphemeralEft]

CBD is cool, but I prefer Traditional Host Caches.

[Developer12]

Cool idea. PCI express links as network and storage infrastructure.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but PCIe is and has always been a networking protocol stack. Same with USB, DP, and a lot of other stuff. Hell, not only is AMD's infinity fabric a mesh networking technology with routers and packets and such, but just about every on-chip "bus" used in SoCs for the last 15 years has been implemented using the same "network-on-chip" concept. Swapping out shared busses for something that looks like a bus to IP modules but is actually a switched network fabric of routers massively reduces contention and increases throughput.