The Gen-Z Consortium is a trade group of technology vendors involved in designing
CPUs,
random access memory
Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to b ...
, servers, storage, and accelerators. The goal was to design an open and royalty-free "memory-semantic" bus protocol, which is not limited by the memory controller of a CPU, to be used in either a
switched fabric
Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network Node (networking), nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches). Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across m ...
or a point-to-point device link on a standard connector.
In November 2021, the GenZ Consortium voted to transfer all its specifications and intellectual property to the
CXL Consortium.
[
]
History
The consortium was publicly announced on October 11, 2016.
Members include server vendors Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...
, Cray
Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed ...
, Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Round Rock, Texas. It was formed as a result of the September 2016 merger of Dell and EMC Corporation (which later became Dell EMC).
Dell's products inc ...
, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States.
HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the H ...
, Huawei
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...
, IBM, and Lenovo
Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, Personal computer, personal computers, ...
. CPU vendor members include Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...
, ARM Holdings
Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England.
Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView an ...
, Broadcom Limited
Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...
, IBM, and Marvell.
Memory and storage vendor members include Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, including ...
, Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
, Seagate Technology
Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquart ...
, SK Hynix
SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Hynix is the world's second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world's third-largest semiconductor company ...
, and Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...
. Other members include IDT Corporation
IDT Corporation (originally standing for International Discount Telecommunications) is a multinational provider of cloud communications, point of sale systems, unified communications, and financial services for businesses and consumers, headqua ...
, IntelliProp, Mellanox Technologies
Mellanox Technologies Ltd. ( he, מלאנוקס טכנולוגיות בע"מ) was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, softwa ...
, Microsemi
Microsemi Corporation was an Aliso Viejo, California-based provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets.
In February 2018, it was announced that Chandler, Arizona-base ...
, Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become ass ...
, and Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the fi ...
. Analysts noted the absence of Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
, which announced an inter-connect technology of its own called Omni-Path
Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) was a high-performance communication architecture owned by Intel. It aims for low communication latency, low power consumption and a high throughput. Intel planned to develop technology based on this architecture for e ...
a year before, and Nvidia
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
, with its own NVLink
NVLink is a wire-based serial multi-lane near-range communications link developed by Nvidia. Unlike PCI Express, a device can consist of multiple NVLinks, and devices use mesh networking to communicate instead of a central hub. The protocol was f ...
technology. Gen-Z also maintains cooperation with industry alliances such as OpenFabrics, SNIA, and DMTF
Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry standards organization that creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, s ...
.
The effort followed years of delays with product availability for version 4.0 of PCI Express
PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...
. Some of the vendors also joined a group to promote the cache coherent interconnect for accelerators
The cache coherent interconnect for accelerators (CCIX) protocol is the result of an effort of a joint group of computer, hardware and software component vendors: AMD, ARM, Huawei, Mellanox Technologies, Qualcomm and Xilinx.
Quotes from the homep ...
(CCIX) protocol on the same day. At about the same time, yet another consortium formed to work on an open specification for the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface
Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI), is a high-speed processor expansion bus standard for use in large data center computers, initially designed to be layered on top of PCI Express, for directly connecting central processing units (CPU ...
(CAPI).
The first version of the GenZ Core specifications was published in 2018; it defines physical link that rom both PCI Express
PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...
and 50 Gigabit Ethernet physical layer (PHY) standards. The Gen-Z protocol allows for asymmetric links with more bandwidth in one direction, and supports connection topologies like point to point links, daisy-chaining, and switched fabrics. The basic operations consist of simple loads and stores with the addition of modular extensions.
Collaboration with CXL
On April 2, 2020, the Compute Express Link
Compute Express Link (CXL) is an open standard for high-speed central processing unit (CPU)-to-device and CPU-to-memory connections, designed for high performance data center computers. CXL is built on the PCI Express (PCIe) physical and electr ...
(CXL) and Gen-Z Consortiums announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU), describing collaboration between the two groups. By October 2020, some technologies were demonstrated at the super computing conference, but no products were announced.
In November 2021 the CXL Consortium and the GenZ Consortium signed a letter of intent for Gen-Z to transfer its specifications and assets to CXL, leaving CXL as the sole industry standard moving forward.[CXL Consortium statement, 10 November 2021]
/ref> In January 2022, GenZ started the process of dissolving operations and transferring all assets to CXL.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Gen-Z Consortium
Computer memory
Technology consortia