Access pattern-aware data placement for hybrid DRAM/NVM

Authors: DİDEM UNAT ERTEN

Abstract: In recent years, increased interest in data-centric applications has led to an increasing demand for large-capacity memory systems. Nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies enable new opportunities in terms of process-scaling and energy consumption, and have become an attractive memory technology that serves as a secondary memory at low cost. However, NVM has certain disadvantages for write references, due to its high dynamic energy consumption for writes and low bandwidth compared to DRAM writes. In this paper, we propose an access-aware placement of objects in the application code for two types of memories. Given the desired power savings and acceptable performance loss, our placement algorithm suggests candidate variables for NVM. We present an evaluation of the proposed technique on two applications and study the energy and performance consequences of different placements.

Keywords: Data placement, nonvolatile memory, static analysis

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