C3: CXL Coherence Controllers for Heterogeneous Architectures

We introduce C3, a systematic methodology for designing Compute Express Link (CXL) coherence controllers, to overcome interoperability challenges that arise from the mismatch of coherence protocols and memory consistency models in heterogeneous CXL-connected systems. Crucially, CXL lacks a unified heterogeneous computing interface, which can lead to unpredictable and inconsistent behavior when multiple heterogeneous devices decide to share cache-coherent CXL memory. C3 acts as a pivotal interface between diverse heterogeneous compute units, bridging the semantic differences without necessitating disruptive changes to existing system architectures. Our approach hinges on two key principles: delegating memory operations across coherence domains and enforcing atomicity at domain boundaries, thereby preserving the native memory consistency model semantics of each unit. We implement C3 as a generic gem5 model and validate its correctness through exhaustive litmus testing. We also show that C3 incurs minimal performance overhead compared to unified native coherence protocols.