SHF: Medium: Cross-Cutting Effort to Make Non-Volatile Memories Truly Usable

非易失性存储器技术的出现为提高现代软件系统和应用程序的性能提供了巨大的潜力，并很有可能给多个计算领域带来革命性的变化。然而，在计算机系统中使用非易失性存储器面临着巨大的编程、性能和可用性挑战。这些挑战阻碍了非易失性存储器在当前和未来计算系统中的广泛采用，并使使用非易失性存储器的应用程序难以编写。为了解决这些问题，这个项目使用了横切和多层的努力，在编译器、计算机体系结构和分布式系统方面取得了进展。通过这种方法，该项目显著提高了使用非易失性存储器技术的程序的软件开发生产率及其性能。此外，该项目还包括伊利诺伊大学的一项强有力的教育努力，在那里开发了新的跨学科课程，并为本科生和未被充分代表的少数族裔提供研究机会。该项目有三个主要方面。首先，该项目为非易失性存储器构建了一个易于使用的通用编程框架，只需要最少的程序员参与。其次，该项目重新设计了处理器和内存层次结构中的硬件原语，以最大限度地减少内存持久化操作和使系统更可用的其他操作的开销。第三，该项目开发了分布式数据持久化模型，并将其应用到分布式运行时环境中，该环境有助于在分布式计算系统中使用非易失性存储器。该项目还包括与微软和英特尔合作进行技术转让。最后，该项目维护一个公共存储库，其中包含在整个项目中使用和开发的所有数据、代码、结果、模拟器和模拟器。该资料库可通过http://iacoma.cs.uiuc.edu，访问，并将在项目结束后至少三年内保持最新状态。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并已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，被认为值得支持。

The emergence of non-volatile memory technologies offers great potential for improving the performance of modern software systems and applications, and is very likely to revolutionize multiple areas of computing. However, the use of non-volatile memory in computer systems faces substantial programming, performance, and usability challenges. These challenges hinder the widespread adoption of non-volatile memory in current and future computing systems, and make applications that use non-volatile memory difficult to write. To address these problems, this project uses a cross-cutting and multi-layer effort that makes advances in compilers, computer architecture, and distributed systems. With such an approach, the project significantly improves the software development productivity of programs using non-volatile memory technologies, as well as their performance. In addition, this project includes a robust education effort at the University of Illinois, where new interdisciplinary courses are developed and research opportunities are offered to undergraduate students and under-represented minorities.This project has three major thrusts. First, the project builds an easy-to-use and generic programming framework for non-volatile memories that requires minimal programmer involvement. Second, this project redesigns hardware primitives in the processor and memory hierarchy to minimize the overhead of both memory persistency operations and other operations needed to make the systems more usable. Third, this project develops distributed data persistency models and applies them to a distributed runtime environment that facilitates the use of non-volatile memories in distributed computing systems. The project further includes an effort to collaborate with Microsoft and Intel to perform technology transfer. Finally, this project maintains a public repository with all the data, code, results, emulators, and simulators used and developed throughout this project. The repository is accessible through http://iacoma.cs.uiuc.edu, and will be kept up to date for at least three years after the project ends.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.