Marvell Unveils Structera X CXL Expanders With Up to 9TB Capacity

Marvell unveiled its second-generation Structera X 3406 and 3506 controllers for Compute Express Link (CXL) memory expansion, targeting artificial intelligence inference and machine-learning workloads that require larger memory pools.

The controllers support CXL 3.2 and PCIe Gen 6 connectivity, with six DDR4 or DDR5 memory channels — 50% more than the previous generation. Each controller can support up to 9TB of DDR4 or 6TB of DDR5 memory. The Structera X 3406 can connect to as many as 18 DDR4 registered dual in-line memory module slots.

The devices support connections to up to four hosts and provide as much as 256 GB/s of PCIe 6.0 x16 bandwidth. The architecture is intended to improve memory utilization across server clusters as large language models and deep-learning recommendation models grow in scale.

Built-in LZ4 compression delivers processing throughput of up to 250 GB/s. It can increase effective memory capacity by two to three times. At the same context length, the technology is designed to improve time to first token by 40% to 50%, or support context windows twice as long while maintaining the same latency.

Samsung Electronics said it is combining DDR memory with CXL to build high-performance systems. SK Hynix said compatibility between Structera and its memory had been validated.

Structera X includes post-quantum cryptography, Caliptra 2.0, CXL Integrity and Data Encryption (CXL IDE) and AES-256 encryption. It also uses StructGuard, an enterprise reliability, availability and serviceability mechanism designed to help prevent DRAM-device failures.

The products were demonstrated at the Open Compute Project Summit and are expected to enter customer sampling in the first quarter of 2027. The ecosystem includes Advanced Micro Devices, Arm, Alibaba, Meta, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.