Marvell unveils second-generation Structera X
Marvell Technology has announced the second-generation Marvell Structera X 3406 and Marvell Structera X 3506 CXL memory expanders, designed to help cloud, enterprise and AI infrastructure providers build more efficient, scalable and higher-performance systems for the next era of AI and computing. Designed to address the evolving needs of leading hyperscale datacenters, Structera X addresses the most demanding data center workload requirements.
AI and ML workloads are rewriting the rules of data center design. Growing LLM sizes, expanding context windows and growing KV-cache requirements are driving unprecedented memory demands that traditional server architectures simply cannot meet. Memory is a critical constraint of AI performance and infrastructure efficiency.
Modern AI inference workloads, from LLM serving to deep learning recommendation models (DLRM), are memory bound. KV-cache capacity directly determines time to first token (TTFT), throughput, and XPU utilization. Structera X 3406/3506 addresses these bottlenecks with:
Industry-first six-channel CXL memory expansion: Six DDR4/DDR5 memory channels deliver 50% more channels than the previous generation, increasing memory bandwidth and capacity so AI servers can sustain larger models and longer context windows - up to 18 DDR4 RDIMM slots supporting 9TB for Structera X 3406 and 12 DDR5 RDIMM slots supporting 6TB for Structera X 3506.
Industry-first four host connectivity: Enables memory capacity sharing with up to four hosts and up to 256GB/s PCIe6.0 x16 of host bandwidth, improving memory utilization and efficiency across AI clusters.
5x higher LZ4 compression throughput from previous generation: Up to 250GB/s compression/decompression throughput unlocks up to 2–3x more effective memory capacity, depending on workloads.
StructGuard™ enterprise-grade RAS: Provides advanced error correction to enhance memory reliability and resilience against DRAM device failures.
Industry-first post-quantum security: Combines post-quantum cryptography, Caliptra 2.0, CXL IDE and AES-256 memory encryption to provide advanced data protection.
For DLRM workloads, Structera X delivers up to 2x higher queries per second and 2–3x more effective embedding-table capacity per controller. For LLM serving, Structera X delivers up to 40–50% faster TTFT at equivalent context length, or up to 2x longer supportable context windows at equivalent latency compared to the previous generation.
Building on the success of the first-generation Structera X 2404/2504, the Structera X 3406/3506 leverages the proven software stack and ecosystem integrations enabling an accelerated ramp. The Marvell CXL ecosystem continues to expand across the full data center stack through close partnership with CPU and memory vendors, OEMs, ODMs and system integrators.
“CXL is starting to gain widespread adoption in AI systems since they reap strong benefits from its very high bandwidth and support of large memory sizes,” said Jim Handy, general director of Objective Analysis, and author of a CXL market report. “In addition, today’s memory shortage and subsequent high prices are driving IT managers to use CXL to re-deploy used DDR4 DIMMs into DDR5 systems for immediate cost savings. In the near future, these same managers will use CXL’s memory pools to reduce stranded memory and drive greater savings, and they will find controllers that offer compression, as this one does, to be even more interesting.”
By bringing together connectivity, memory and storage technologies, the expanded data center portfolio improves how compute and memory work across AI systems, increasing utilization, infrastructure efficiency and AI performance. These next-generation offerings increase access to memory resources, improving both memory and compute utilization, helping customers optimize AI infrastructure performance as workloads continue to grow in scale and complexity.
“Marvell is the only provider with a complete end-to-end CXL portfolio spanning memory expansion (Structera X), near-memory acceleration (Structera A), and PFMA (Photonic Fabric™ Memory Appliance), pod-scale CXL memory-sharing appliance, giving customers a complete portfolio from direct-attach to disaggregated memory pooling,” said Will Chu, executive vice president and general manager, Custom Cloud Solutions at Marvell. “We are delivering industry-leading CXL controllers, co-developed with leading hyperscalers to address the most demanding AI infrastructure requirements.”
