Gen-Z (consortium)
The Gen-Z consortium is a trade group of technology vendors involved in designing CPUs, random access memory, servers, storage, and accelerators. The goal was an open and royalty-free "memory-semantic" protocol, which is not limited by the memory controller of a CPU. The basic operations consist of simple loads and stores with the addition of modular extensions. It is intended to be used in a switched fabric or point-to-point where each device connects using a standard connector.

History
The consortium was publicly announced on October 11, 2016. 
Some of the vendors also joined a group to promote the cache coherent interconnect for accelerators (CCIX) protocol on the same day. 

At about the same time, yet another consortium formed to work on an open specification for the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI). The efforts followed years of delays before products were available with version 4.0 of PCI Express.

Server vendor members include Cisco Systems, Cray, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, and Lenovo. CPU vendor members include Advanced Micro Devices, ARM Holdings, Broadcom Limited, IBM, and Marvell. 
Memory and storage vendor members include Micron Technology, Samsung, Seagate Technology, SK Hynix, and Western Digital.  Other members include IDT Corporation, IntelliProp, Mellanox Technologies, Microsemi, Red Hat, and Xilinx. Gen-Z also maintains cooperation with industry alliances such as OpenFabrics,> SNIA, and DMTF.

Analysts noted the absence of Intel, which announced an inter-connect technology of its own called Omni-Path a year before, and Nvidia, with its own NVLink technology.
The first version of the specification was published in 2018. 

On April 2, 2020, the Compute Express Link (CXL) and Gen-Z Consortiums announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU), describing collaboration between the two groups.
By October 2020, some technologies were demonstrated at the super computing conference, but no products were announced.

In November 2021 the CXL Consortium and the GenZ Consortium signed a letter of intent for Gen-Z to transfer its specifications and assets to CXL, leaving CXL as the sole industry standard moving forward.

References

External links 
 Gen-Z Consortium

Computer memory
Technology consortia