Title :
A preliminary study on system-level impact of persistent main memory
Author :
Perez, Taciano ; Calazans, Ney Laert vilar ; De Rose, César A F
Author_Institution :
Hewlett-Packard R&D, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Abstract :
For almost 30 years, computer memory systems have been essentially the same: volatile, high speed memory technologies like SRAM and DRAM used for cache and main memory; magnetic disks for high-end data storage; and persistent, low speed flash memory for storage with low capacity/low energy consumption requirements such as embedded/mobile devices. Today we watch the emergence of new non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies that promise to radically change the landscape of memory systems. This work presents system-level latency and energy impacts of a computer architecture with persistent main memory using PCRAM and Memristor. Our experimental results support the feasibility of employing emerging non-volatile memory technologies as persistent main memory, indicating that performance penalties should be mild, and energy improvements should be significant, up to 45.5% less when using PCRAM and 72.4% less when using Memristor.
Keywords :
memory architecture; memristors; random-access storage; NVM technologies; PCRAM; computer architecture; computer memory system; energy impact; memristor; nonvolatile memory technologies; persistent main memory; system-level impact; system-level latency; Computers; Materials; Memory management; Memristors; Nonvolatile memory; Phase change random access memory; Memristor; Non-Volatile Memory; PCRAM; Persistent Main Memory; RRAM;
Conference_Titel :
Quality Electronic Design (ISQED), 2012 13th International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Santa Clara, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1034-5
DOI :
10.1109/ISQED.2012.6187478