Samsung forecasts CXL-related sales in latter half of year

Samsung Electronics says it expects to generate revenue from Compute Express Link-related products.

Choi Jang-seok, vice president of the New Business Planning Team at Samsung Electronics, speaks in a briefing held in central Seoul on Thursday. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Samsung Electronics expects to generate revenue from Compute Express Link (CXL)-related products from the latter half of the year, while anticipating the market to open in full swing from 2028.

CXL is an emerging memory chip technology that supports communication among elements in a system such as logic processors and memory devices to utilize memory resources more flexibly. It has greater scalability through the ability to attach and detach devices to the server like solid-state drive (SSDs).

The technology came under the spotlight in the face of an AI era that continues to require more data processing.

"We will generate revenue from CXL from the latter half of the year, although it will be small," said Choi Jang-seok, vice president of the New Business Planning Team at Samsung Electronics, in a briefing held Thursday.

"We are anticipating a hockey stick trajectory in 2028 as products that can deploy CXL get prepared as well."

For yet-to-commercialize chip technology, it is important to accumulate as many reference cases as possible with clients to optimize the performance and that's exactly what Samsung is doing, according to Choi.

"It is crucial to optimize compatibility with clients to launch products that are solid," he said. "We are verifying the products with clients more than any other company at the moment."

Samsung is working together with at least 45 firms in Europe, Asia and the United States to develop and verify CXL technology, Choi said.

The Korean chipmaker is determined to take an early lead in the CXL business after admitting to some missteps in high bandwidth memory chips.

The tech giant was the first in the industry to develop CXL-based dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips in 2021, dubbed CXL Memory Module-DRAM, and has been leading related technology advancement by offering CXL-based NANDs and a hybrid version as well combining DRAM and NAND.

It is currently on a verification step with major clients of CXL 2.0-based DRAM with 256GB.

"We have spent more than 10 years on the development and mass production of CXL. The similarity in hardware, software, assembly and verification technology with the SSDs give us the upper hand because we have maintained the No. 1 spot in SSD for more than 10 years," Choi said.

Samsung Electronics is the only memory chip company on the 15-member board of CXL Consortium, which includes Alibaba, AMD, ARM, Intel, Meta and Nvidia among others, that is working to develop and standardize CXL technology.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]