XMFS: Experimental File-System Being Worked On By Huawei For Modern Linux Servers

Huawei engineers are experimenting with a new file-system called XMFS. XMFS was presented this week at LPC 2026 in Czechia as a file-system for modern Linux servers with CXL 3.0 or Huawei United Bus connectivity. The intent on XMFS, which is short for the "eXpress Memory FS", is making remote memory directly addressable through POSIX file-system interfaces. XMFS enables cross-node, shared memory from the likes of CXL 3.0 or Huawei United Bus to be accessible through standard POSIX file-system interfaces. XMFS is an alternative to other file-systems being worked on by other vendors for CXL servers such as FAMFS and DAXFS with the main point of XMFS being support for ordinary POSIX file-system operations. Basic performance benchmarks of XMFS shared at LPC 2026 are promising relative to just TMPFS. Huawei has been testing XMFS for the likes of container image sharing across multiple nodes and other metadata-intensive workloads. XMFS is still experimental and hasn't been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list for any review / possible inclusion yet but those wanting to learn more about it can do so via the LPC presentation.