Advanced Persistent Memory Programming: Local, Remote and Cross-Platform

Persistent Memory (“PM”) support is becoming ubiquitous in today’s operating systems and computing platforms. From Windows to Linux to open source, and from NVDIMM, PCI Express, storage-attached and network-attached interconnect access, it is available broadly across the industry. Its byte-addressability and ultra-low latency, combined with its durability, promise a revolution in storage and applications as they evolve to take advantage of these new platform capabilities.

Our tutorial explores the concepts and today’s programming methodologies for PM, including the SNIA NonVolatile Memory Programming Model architecture, open source and native APIs, operating system support for PM such as direct access filesystems, and via language and compiler approaches as well. The software PM landscape is already rich, and growing.

Additionally, the tutorial will explore the considerations when PM access is extended across fabrics such as networks, I/O interconnects, and other non-local access. While the programming paradigms remain common, the implications on latency, protocols, and especially error recovery are critically important to both performance and correctness. Understanding these requirements are of interest to both the system and application developer or designer.

Specific programming examples, fully functional on today’s systems, will be shown and analyzed. Concepts for moving new applications and storage paradigms to PM will be motivated and explored. Application developers, system software developers, and network system designers will all benefit. Anyone interested in an in-depth introduction to PM in emerging software and hardware systems can also expect an illuminating and thought-provoking experience.