Efficient NVRAM-based general purpose operating systems

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a disruptive shift in storage systems and supporting hardware technologies. This poses new challenges for an operating system (OS) in the holistic management of the computer’s memory hierarchy. Non-volatile RAM (NVRAM), in particular, presents a number of promising opportunities, aside from its large capacity at comparatively low costs, its higher speed compared to conventional storage and its ability to maintain a persistent state without additional energy costs. If general-purpose operating systems run entirely in NVRAM, persistence measures within the OS could be eliminated, reducing space, time, and energy requirements. However, consideration of NVRAM as an alternative main memory technology, also causes difficulties. Compared to DRAM writing to NVRAM is slower and results in higher power consumption. In addition, with NVRAM, fail-safe guarantees are now required from the system

    Similar works