OpenCXD: An Open Real-Device-Guided Hybrid Evaluation Framework for CXL-SSDs
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866916901425250304 |
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| author | Chung, Hyunsun Park, Junhyeok Noh, Taewan Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Kihwan Zhao, Ming Kim, Youngjae |
| author_facet | Chung, Hyunsun Park, Junhyeok Noh, Taewan Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Kihwan Zhao, Ming Kim, Youngjae |
| contents | The advent of Compute Express Link (CXL) enables SSDs to participate in the memory hierarchy as large-capacity, byte-addressable memory devices. These CXL-enabled SSDs (CXL-SSDs) offer a promising new tier between DRAM and traditional storage, combining NAND flash density with memory-like access semantics. However, evaluating the performance of CXL-SSDs remains difficult due to the lack of hardware that natively supports the CXL.mem protocol on SSDs. As a result, most prior work relies on hybrid simulators combining CPU models augmented with CXL.mem semantics and SSD simulators that approximate internal flash behaviors. While effective for early-stage exploration, this approach cannot faithfully model firmware-level interactions and low-level storage dynamics critical to CXL-SSD performance. In this paper, we present OpenCXD, a real-device-guided hybrid evaluation framework that bridges the gap between simulation and hardware. OpenCXD integrates a cycle-accurate CXL.mem simulator on the host side with a physical OpenSSD platform running real firmware. This enables in-situ firmware execution triggered by simulated memory requests. Through these contributions, OpenCXD reflects device-level phenomena unobservable in simulation-only setups, providing critical insights for future firmware design tailored to CXL-SSDs. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_11477 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | OpenCXD: An Open Real-Device-Guided Hybrid Evaluation Framework for CXL-SSDs Chung, Hyunsun Park, Junhyeok Noh, Taewan Ahn, Seonghoon Kim, Kihwan Zhao, Ming Kim, Youngjae Hardware Architecture Emerging Technologies Operating Systems The advent of Compute Express Link (CXL) enables SSDs to participate in the memory hierarchy as large-capacity, byte-addressable memory devices. These CXL-enabled SSDs (CXL-SSDs) offer a promising new tier between DRAM and traditional storage, combining NAND flash density with memory-like access semantics. However, evaluating the performance of CXL-SSDs remains difficult due to the lack of hardware that natively supports the CXL.mem protocol on SSDs. As a result, most prior work relies on hybrid simulators combining CPU models augmented with CXL.mem semantics and SSD simulators that approximate internal flash behaviors. While effective for early-stage exploration, this approach cannot faithfully model firmware-level interactions and low-level storage dynamics critical to CXL-SSD performance. In this paper, we present OpenCXD, a real-device-guided hybrid evaluation framework that bridges the gap between simulation and hardware. OpenCXD integrates a cycle-accurate CXL.mem simulator on the host side with a physical OpenSSD platform running real firmware. This enables in-situ firmware execution triggered by simulated memory requests. Through these contributions, OpenCXD reflects device-level phenomena unobservable in simulation-only setups, providing critical insights for future firmware design tailored to CXL-SSDs. |
| title | OpenCXD: An Open Real-Device-Guided Hybrid Evaluation Framework for CXL-SSDs |
| topic | Hardware Architecture Emerging Technologies Operating Systems |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11477 |