ASTERA LABS' NEW LEO X CONTROLLER LETS MEMORY EXPANDERS PLUG DIRECTLY INTO AI ACCELERATOR FABRIC NETWORKS

Summary from the TLDR Hardware newsletter

Astera Labs' second-gen Leo 2 CXL memory controllers move from PCIe Gen5/CXL 2.x to Gen6/CXL 3.2 and double memory channels from 2 to 4, doubling both bandwidth and total capacity to up to 768GB of DDR4 or 4TB of DDR5 per expander, with new RAS features like hardware DIMM testing and soft-ECC on top of hardware ECC, aimed at economically reusing cheap, aging DDR4 pulled from retired servers rather than buying expensive new DDR5 amid the ongoing memory shortage.