skip to main content
10.1145/2527792.2527800acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessospConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

MetaData persistence using storage class memory: experiences with flash-backed DRAM

Published:03 November 2013Publication History

ABSTRACT

Storage Class Memory (SCM) blends the best properties of main memory and hard disk drives. It offers non-volatility and byte addressability, and promises short access times with low cost per bit. Earlier research in this field explored designs exploiting SCM features and used either simulations or theoretical models for evaluations. In this work, we explore the design challenges for achieving non-volatility using real SCM hardware that is available now: Flash-Backed DRAM. We present performance analysis of flash-backed DRAM and describe the system issues involved in achieving true non-volatility using the system memory hierarchy which was designed assuming that data is volatile. We present software abstractions which allow applications to be redesigned easily using SCM features, without having to worry about system issues. Furthermore, we present case studies using two applications with different characteristics: an SSD-based caching layer used in enterprise storage (Flash Cache) and an in-memory database (SolidDB), and redesign them using software abstractions. Our performance evaluations reveal that SCM aware Flash Cache design could enable persistence with less than 2% degradation in performance. Similarly, redesigning SolidDB persistence layer using SCM improved the performance by a factor of two. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that evaluates SCM performance and demonstrates application redesign using real SCM hardware.

References

  1. Agiga Tech. Finding the Perfect Memory. http://www.agigatech.com/pdf/pdf_WhitePaper_FindingPerfectMemory.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. H. Akinaga and H. Shima. Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) Based on Metal Oxides. Proceedings of the IEEE.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. M. Athanassoulis, B. Bhattacharjee, M. Canim, and K. A. Ross. Path processing using Solid State Storage.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. E. Chen, D. Apalkov, Z. Diao, A. Driskill-Smith, D. Druist, D. Lottis, V. Nikitin, X. Tang, S. Watts, S. Wang, S. Wolf, A. Ghosh, J. Lu, S. Poon, M. Stan, W. Butler, S. Gupta, C. Mewes, T. Mewes, and P. Visscher. Advances and Future Prospects of Spin-Transfer Torque Random Access Memory. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2010.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. J. Coburn, A. M. Caulfield, A. Akel, L. M. Grupp, R. K. Gupta, R. Jhala, and S. Swanson. NV-Heaps: Making Persistent Objects Fast and Safe with Next-generation, Non-volatile Memories. SIGARCH Comput. Archit. News. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. J. Condit, E. B. Nightingale, C. Frost, E. Ipek, B. Lee, D. Burger, and D. Coetzee. Better I/O through Byte-addressable, Persistent Memory. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGOPS 22nd symposium on Operating systems principles. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  7. R. Fang, H.-I. Hsiao, B. He, C. Mohan, and Y. Wang. High Performance Database Logging using Storage Class Memory. In 2011 International Conference on Data Engineering. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. R. F. Freitas and W. W. Wilcke. Storage-Class Memory: The Next Storage System Technology. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 2008. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. Fusion IO. Fusionio Drive Specifications. http://www.fusionio.com/load/media-docsProduct/kcb62o/Fusion_Specsheet.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. W. Gallagher, D. Abraham, and et. al. Recent Advances in MRAM Technology. In VLSI Technology, 2005. (VLSI-TSA-Tech). IEEE VLSI-TSA International Symposium on, 2005.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  11. Hewlett Packard. Flash DIMM Technology. http://www.stethos.com/flashmemory/data/paper.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. IBM XIV Storage System. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv/index.html.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. D. Narayanan and O. Hodson. Whole-System Persistence. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, ASPLOS XVII, 2012. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  14. M. K. Qureshi, S. Gurumurthi, and B. Rajendran. Phase Change Memory: From Devices to Systems. Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture. 2011. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. S. Raoux, G. W. Burr, M. J. Breitwisch, C. T. Rettner, Y.-C. Chen, R. M. Shelby, M. Salinga, D. Krebs, S.-H. Chen, H.-L. Lung, and C. H. Lam. Phase-Change Random Access Memory: A Scalable Technology. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 2008. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  16. C. W. Smullen, IV, A. Nigam, S. Gurumurthi, and M. R. Stan. The STeTSiMS STT-RAM simulation and modeling system. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, ICCAD '11, 2011. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. T. Kaldewey, A. Blas, J. Hagen, E. Sedlar, S. Brandt. Memory Matters. In Work in Progress in the 29th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. S. Venkataraman, N. Tolia, P. Ranganathan, and R. H. Campbell. Consistent and Durable Data Structures for Non-volatile Byte-addressable Memory. In Proceedings of the 9th USENIX conference on File and stroage technologies. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  19. H. Volos, A. J. Tack, and M. M. Swift. Mnemosyne: Lightweight Persistent Memory. In Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, ASPLOS '11. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. MetaData persistence using storage class memory: experiences with flash-backed DRAM

          Recommendations

          Comments

          Login options

          Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

          Sign in
          • Published in

            cover image ACM Conferences
            INFLOW '13: Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Interactions of NVM/FLASH with Operating Systems and Workloads
            November 2013
            73 pages
            ISBN:9781450324625
            DOI:10.1145/2527792

            Copyright © 2013 ACM

            Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

            Publisher

            Association for Computing Machinery

            New York, NY, United States

            Publication History

            • Published: 3 November 2013

            Permissions

            Request permissions about this article.

            Request Permissions

            Check for updates

            Qualifiers

            • research-article

            Acceptance Rates

            INFLOW '13 Paper Acceptance Rate8of15submissions,53%Overall Acceptance Rate8of15submissions,53%

            Upcoming Conference

            SOSP '24

          PDF Format

          View or Download as a PDF file.

          PDF

          eReader

          View online with eReader.

          eReader