Huawei engineers introduced the experimental XMFS file system at the Linux Plumbers Conference 2026 in the Czech Republic. The system, known as eXpress Memory FS, is specifically engineered for modern Linux servers equipped with CXL 3.0 or Huawei's proprietary unified bus architecture.
The primary objective of XMFS is to provide direct access to shared memory across nodes using standard POSIX interfaces. This approach allows applications to utilize remote memory as if it were local without requiring any modifications to the existing software logic.
During the conference, Huawei presented performance benchmarks showing that XMFS outperforms the traditional TMPFS file system. The company has already validated the technology for use cases involving multi-node container image sharing and metadata-intensive workloads.
The solution is positioned for deployment in AI and high-performance computing environments where frequent metadata access is critical. Currently, XMFS remains in the experimental phase and has not yet been submitted to the Linux kernel mailing list for community review.
