Marvell unveils six-channel CXL expanders for AI

Marvell unveiled its second-generation Structera X 3406 and 3506 CXL memory expanders, designed to ease memory bottlenecks in AI inference and data center workloads. The six-channel devices offer 50% more memory channels than the previous generation: the DDR4 3406 supports up to 9TB, while the DDR5 3506 supports up to 6TB. They can share memory among as many as four hosts, provide up to 256GB/s of host bandwidth, and deliver compression throughput of up to 250GB/s to increase effective memory capacity. The products target growing demands from larger AI models, longer context windows and expanding KV caches; customer sampling is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027.