Welcome to the new CCIX Blog!

By Scott Knowlton, Synopsys June 28, 2017

25G Accelerators Cache Coherent Interconnect CCIX Data Center Marketing Networking PCI Express PCIe Scott Knowlton Servers Storage

Welcome to the new CCIX Blog!

We will be continuously updating the CCIX website with the latest information on the CCIX specifications and industry adoption.  In addition, this blog will highlight new CCIX technology demonstrations and feature CCIX related news from member companies.

What is CCIX?

CCIX (pronounced “See-6”) defines a cache-coherent multichip interconnect that brings a new class of performance and efficiency to evolving and emerging acceleration use cases within cloud, data center, and networking systems. CCIX is the industry’s first interconnect technology specification dedicated to ensuring that processors using different instruction set architectures (ISA) can coherently share data with accelerators and enable efficient heterogeneous computing over low-latency PCIe interfaces operating up to 25Gb/s per lane with a future examining 56GT/s and beyond.

CCIX expands upon PCI Express to allow interconnected components to access and share cache-coherent data similar to a processor core. The CCIX interconnect operates at up to 25Gb/s per lane, providing 3X speed up over present industry standard PCIe Gen3 interfaces running at 8Gb/s, and 56% faster than upcoming PCIe Gen4 interfaces operating at 16Gb/s. CCIX is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 and 4.0, leveraging existing server ecosystems and form factors while lowering software barriers.

Why CCIX?

Big data analytics, search, machine learning, network functions virtualization (NFV), wireless 4G/5G, in-memory database processing, video analytics, and network processing are reshaping consumer behavior and enterprise strategies. The wireless 5G increase of 10X data rate and 10X latency reductions are already transforming board-scale deployments of network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN).

Big data analytics are growing at an 11.7% CAGR and together with the growth in machine learning and video analytics is forcing a move from homogeneous computing clusters (pure CPU-centric server) to scalable heterogeneous clusters to handle faster learning and accurate low-latency analytics. The inclusion of accelerator technologies is necessary to meet required performance gains while maintaining data center power, space, and cost constraints.

The data growth projections are outpacing the present PCIe connections standard solution at a rate of 10X–50X by the year 2021. The standard interface links performance and topology are already falling short on bandwidth, long data latency, with a large overhead that limits seamless movement of data amid the various system components.

In summary, CCIX-enabled servers deliver higher performance, lower latency, provide greater memory bandwidth and lower operating costs (lower power and less cooling) which will deliver the TCO improvements that datacenter, cloud and enterprise users are demanding.

Where CCIX?

To find out more about CCIX, the CCIX specification and adoption, please visit our web site at www.ccixconsortium.com