SHF: SMALL: Collaborative Research: Improving Reliability of In-Memory Storage

新兴的非易失性存储器(NVM)技术，如PCM、STT-RAM和忆阻器，不仅提供字节可寻址、可与DRAM媲美的低延迟读写，而且还提供持久写入和潜在的大存储容量(如SSD)。这些优势使NVM很可能成为下一代海量数据的快速持久存储，称为内存存储。然而，基于NVM的存储有两个挑战：(1)存储单元的写入耐久性有限(即，每个单元的编程/擦除周期的总数)；(2)在系统崩溃或断电的情况下，NVM必须保持一致的状态。该项目的目标是开发一种高效的内存存储框架，以应对这两个挑战。这个项目涉及本科生和研究生。所有软件产品和工具都将提供给更广泛的研究社区。这项工作具有更广泛的工业和经济影响，因为它将有助于提高数据中心和HPC应用程序的数据存储系统的可靠性。该项目将采取从低级架构设计到高级操作系统管理的整体方法，以优化内存中存储的可靠性、性能和可管理性。技术方法将涉及了解在存储系统中采用尖端NVM时写入耐久性问题的含义和影响。更好的理解将激励和帮助设计具有成本效益的方法，以延长内存存储的寿命，并实现高效和可靠的一致性维护。

Emerging nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies, such as PCM, STT-RAM, and memristors, provide not only byte-addressability, low-latency reads and writes comparable to DRAM, but also persistent writes and potentially large storage capacity like an SSD. These advantages make NVM likely to be next-generation fast persistent storage for massive data, referred to as in-memory storage. Yet, NVM-based storage has two challenges: (1) Memory cells have limited write endurance (i.e., the total number of program/erase cycles per cell); (2) NVM has to remain in a consistent state in the event of a system crash or power loss. The goal of this project is to develop an efficient in-memory storage framework that addresses these two challenges. This project involves undergraduate and graduate students. All software artifacts and tools will be made available to the wider research community. The work has broader industrial and economic impact since it will help improve the reliability of data storage systems for data centers and HPC applications. This project will take a holistic approach, spanning from low-level architecture design to high-level OS management, to optimize the reliability, performance, and manageability of in-memory storage. The technical approach will involve understanding the implication and impact of the write endurance issue when cutting-edge NVM is adopted into storage systems. The improved understanding will motivate and aid the design of cost-effective methods to improve the life-time of in-memory storage and to achieve efficient and reliable consistence maintenance.