Bryan S. Kim, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, has received funding from semiconductor company FADU to explore how CXL, a new open standard for connecting computer components, would transform data center applications.

With CXL, an entire rack of computers can be connected through the peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) bus with shared memory coherency, rethinking how computers access and share data.

“CXL is still in its infancy with only limited publicly available hardware. After all, its specification is only a few years old” Kim explained. “Furthermore, how CXL and its hardware would affect software system design is completely unexplored.”

Kim’s collaborative project will investigate the fundamental technologies for building a software system with CXL memory, the designs for resilient and reliable CXL fabric, and the transformation of data center applications due to CXL.

“While there is a large research community interest in CXL, there are only a handful of research groups who have published in this area,” Kim said. “I am grateful to be at the leading front and continuing the success of this project.”