CNS Core: Medium: Collaborative Research: Persistent memory objects for consistent sharing in Non-Volatile Main Memories

数据中心服务器的持续性能增长对国家的经济竞争力至关重要，也是科学努力进步的催化剂。两个重要的数据中心组件是主内存和存储，前者访问速度快，但只能暂时存储数据；后者永久保存数据，但访问速度慢。最近的技术进步带来了一种新的非易失性存储器，现在可以在商业上买到，它既可以存储永久数据，又可以快速访问。然而，为了发挥其潜力，利用这些新的存储技术需要重新思考如何持久和有效地存储数据。该建议描述了一种用于在非易失性存储器中存储持久数据的新抽象：超文件，它寿命长，提供快速访问，并且可以快速地附加到进程地址空间或从进程地址空间分离。超文件提供与文件类似(但比文件更快)的命名和权限特征，并且速度更接近内存。可以通过加载/存储直接访问它们，以避免系统调用开销。该项目还研究了新的超文件共享语义，允许非协作进程同时安全地共享它们，同时保持崩溃恢复特性。还将设计和评估加速超级文件共享的架构支持。该项目将通过减少文件访问的固有开销来实现对持久数据的快速访问，从而通过强大的共享语义实现更多的数据并发使用。大数据工作负载在所有行业中变得普遍，要么性能更好，要么需要更少的资源。产生的软件和原型构件将使其他研究人员能够进一步改进设计，并调整工作负载以利用超文件抽象。该计划的教育和宣传部分将培训下一代程序员使用永久存储器，并将鼓励未被充分代表的学生加入下一代程序员。该项目将在项目期间以及之后的五年内维护数据、代码、结果、出版物和模拟器构件。每个构件都将在达到足够的成熟度时发布。它们将张贴在：https://sites.google.com/view/hyperfile.This奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并已被认为值得支持，通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

The continual performance growth of data center servers is critical to the nation's economic competitiveness and as a catalyst for progress in scientific endeavors. Two important data center components are the main memory, which has fast access but can only store data temporarily, and storage, which keeps data permanently but suffers from slow access. Recent technology advances have brought in a new non-volatile memory, now commercially available, that can both host permanent data and be accessed quickly. However, to reach its potential, utilizing these new memory technologies requires rethinking of how data should be persistently and efficiently stored. This proposal describes a new abstraction for storing persistent data in non-volatile memory: hyperfiles, which are long lived, provide fast access, and can be quickly attached to and detached from a process address space. Hyperfiles provide naming and permission characteristics similar to (but faster than) files, and speed closer to memory. They are accessed directly through loads/stores to avoid system call overhead. This project also investigates new sharing semantics for hyperfiles, allowing non-cooperating processes to share them simultaneously and safely, while keeping the crash recovery property. Architecture support to accelerate hyperfile sharing will also be designed and evaluated. This project will enable fast access to persistent data by reducing overheads inherent in file access, and thus enable more concurrent use of data through strong sharing semantics. Big-data workloads becoming common across all industries will either perform better or require fewer resources. The software and prototyping artifacts produced will enable other researchers to further enhance the design, and to adapt workloads to take advantage of the hyperfile abstraction. The education and outreach components of this plan will train the next generation of programmers on use of persistent memory, and will encourage underrepresented students to join the next generation of programmers. The project will maintain data, code, results, publications, and simulator artifacts for the duration of the project plus five years afterward. Each artifact will be released as it reaches sufficient maturity. They will be posted at: https://sites.google.com/view/hyperfile.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.