GoKawiilXCENA and Samsung unveil MX1, a CXL memory-expansion chip with 3072 RISC-V cores
XCENA partnered with Samsung to build the MX1, a CXL 3.2 device that can expand host memory by up to 2TB of DDR5 while also connecting SSDs and performing on-board computation. The chip, made on Samsung's 4nm process, packs 3072 small RISC-V cores organized into 24 independently schedulable subsystems, alongside two Arm Cortex A53 cores for control, and draws about 40W on the chip and 90W for the full board with DIMMs.
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As AI and ML workloads increasingly outstrip the memory capacity of standard servers, CXL-based memory expansion with integrated compute offers a way to scale memory near-linearly while offloading data-parallel tasks from the host CPU. This near-memory compute approach, reminiscent of Intel's Xeon Phi strategy, could reshape how data centers balance memory bandwidth, capacity and power efficiency for large-scale AI systems.
- MX1 provides up to 2TB of DDR5 expansion via PCIe 6/CXL 3.2 with 128GB/s bandwidth to the host.
- The chip integrates 3072 RISC-V cores across 24 subsystems for parallel, in-memory compute tasks.
- Built on Samsung's 4nm process, the design prioritizes power-efficient parallelism over single-thread speed.
Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD — While XCENA's MX1 pushes CXL memory expansion and SSD-backed memory into the datacenter, the Samsung 990 PRO brings fast PCIe NVMe storage to your own rig. It's a great pick for loading large ML models and datasets quickly, and it slots straight into an M.2 socket on modern motherboards.
See Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: chipsandcheese.com — Chester Lam, 2026-08-30
Published there as: “Xcena and Samsung's Near Memory Compute CXL Device”
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