On June 24, 2025, Fabless chip designer Primemas officially announced that it has delivered the world's first CXL3.0 controller/master SoC based on PCIe 6.0 PHY to customers. This product is not only the first time in the industry to implement the CXL3.0 standard into a mass-produced SoC product, but also marks a new stage in data center architecture innovation. Its technological innovation and system design concepts have provided strong support for increasingly complex AI, big data, and cloud computing workloads, and have become the focus of attention in the semiconductor industry.
Ⅰ Technical highlights: Modular Hublet architecture reconstructs SoC performance models
The Primemas CXL3.0 SoC uses a modular "Hublet" chiplet architecture that provides a new path to scalable system-on-SoC through flexible stacking and interconnecting. Different from the traditional single-chip design, Hublet focuses on high-bandwidth, low-latency inter-chip interfaces to achieve high-speed resource sharing and collaborative computing between SoC modules.
*In a 1×1 configuration, Hublet can support a single EDSFF E3. S device connection, up to 512GB DRAM;
*The 2×2 configuration can be expanded to 2TB of DRAM, which is compatible with PCIe AIC or CEM form factor.
* The most groundbreaking 4×4 configuration that supports up to 8TB of DRAM to a 1U rack server to support memory-intensive tasks such as large-scale AI inference and training.
Jay Kim, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Development at Primemas, said, "The feedback from our earliest partners is encouraging as Hublet technology addresses the exponential growth of computing pressures. This confirms that our judgment and investment in the direction of CXL architecture are correct.”
Notably, Primemas uses the PCIe 6.0 PHY-based CXL3.0 implementation, which significantly reduces bottlenecks within the SoC and at the system level, supported by a bandwidth of up to 64GT/s per lane, laying the foundation for future expansion to CXL3.1 and beyond.
Pictured: Primemas has officially delivered the world's first CXL 3.0 SoC sample to a customer
Ⅱ Industry value: Break the "memory wall" and promote the transformation of the data center system
Data center architectures are undergoing profound changes, especially in the context of the rapid application of AI and LLMs (large language models), and the traditional coupling architecture between CPU and memory has faced the challenge of "memory wall". CXL (Compute Express Link) technology, as an open standard interconnection protocol, is becoming the key to breaking this limitation.
It is in this context that Primemas' CXL3.0 SoC was launched, which has the following industry-level implications:
1. Resource decoupling and on-demand scheduling: Through the support of memory pooling and heterogeneous computing resources, resource utilization and deployment flexibility can be significantly improved.
2. Data center energy efficiency optimization: The SoC architecture supports fine-grained scheduling of power consumption and computing resources, effectively alleviating the pressure of energy consumption under high-density deployment.
3. System scalability improvement: It supports modular expansion, which is convenient for data centers to upgrade on demand, and there is no need to replace the server platform as a whole.
According to Omdia, Gartner and other institutions, by 2025, the global data center market is expected to exceed $600 billion, of which the CXL-related chip market will exceed $5 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 40%. Primemas' innovative products are on this high-growth trajectory and have strong business growth potential.
Ⅲ Business Potential: Innovation-driven opportunities for new business models
In addition to technological breakthroughs, Primemas' CXL3.0 SoC also opens up a diversified business path for it:
* Chip sales revenue: As the world's first CXL3.0 SoC, it has a technical "first-mover dividend" and can be prioritized into the procurement list of server OEMs and AI cloud service providers;
* System solution cooperation: Develop customized platforms through cooperation with server, storage, and memory module manufacturers to develop solution-level revenue;
* Platform ecosystem empowerment: With the help of CXL open standards, Primemas is expected to dominate the definition of next-generation system architecture and enhance the industry's voice.
In addition, the global "computing infrastructure investment" is at its peak, and China, the United States, and Europe have all issued policies to support the upgrading of data centers. In this context, Primemas is expected to accelerate its global layout and seize the core market share by cooperating with local OEM/ODM.
Ⅳ Technological Challenges and Competitive Landscape: The Cost of Innovation and Countermeasures
As the first product, Primemas' CXL3.0 SoC has a first-mover advantage, but it also faces a number of challenges:
1. Increased complexity of multi-module collaboration: Highly integrated design can easily cause problems such as timing control and data consistency. Especially in the 4×4 configuration, the control logic needs to be closely verified to ensure stable operation under high loads.
2. Increasing pressure on power management: According to industry tests, multi-chip SoC designs can consume 300W–500W when running high-throughput AI tasks, which needs to be optimized by DVFS and distributed power supply.
3. Intensified ecological competition: Many giants, including Intel, Samsung, and Marvell, have successively launched CXL2.0 controller products and are actively promoting 3.0 research and development. Primemas needs to continue to invest in R&D and control BOM costs to maintain a competitive edge.
Primemas is also prepared for this. The company revealed that its next-generation SoC has started tape-out verification, and plans to support CXL3.1, DDR5/DDR6 hybrid interface, AI inference acceleration engine and other functional modules in the future, in order to continue to iterate on chip performance and system integration.
Ⅴ Looking to the Future: A New Paradigm for Data Centers in the CXL Architecture
Primemas' world-premiere CXL3.0 SoC marks a new era of data center SoC chip design with "resource decoupling + module combination" as the core.
In the next three to five years, CXL technology may unleash greater potential in the following directions:
* Memory pooling and shared computing resources have become mainstream;
* Support unified interconnection of heterogeneous computing power such as GPU, DPU, FPGA, etc.;
*The microservice architecture is more closely integrated with bare metal servers.
If it can seize the dividends of CXL technology and build a complete product matrix and software and hardware ecosystem, Primemas is expected to establish a long-term leading position in the field of data center SoCs.
Ⅵ Conclusion:
At a time when the semiconductor industry is rapidly evolving and data center architecture is in urgent need of innovation, Primemas has demonstrated its excellent system design capabilities and market acumen with the world's first CXL3.0 SoC. This is not only a success of a product, but also an attempt to implement forward-looking architectural thinking. In the future, whether Primemas can lead a new round of industrial transformation and build a new force map in the chip industry is worthy of the industry's continued attention.
