PCM-based durable write cache for fast disk I/O

Zhuo Liu, Bin Wang, Patrick Carpenter, Dong Li, Jeffrey S. Vetter, Weikuan Yu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

31 Scopus citations

Abstract

Flash based solid-state devices (FSSDs) have been adopted within the memory hierarchy to improve the performance of hard disk drive (HDD) based storage system. However, with the fast development of storage-class memories, new storage technologies with better performance and higher write endurance than FSSDs are emerging, e.g., phase-change memory (PCM). Understanding how to leverage these state-of the-art storage technologies for modern computing systems is important to solve challenging data intensive computing problems. In this paper, we propose to leverage PCM for a hybrid PCM-HDD storage architecture. We identify the limitations of traditional LRU caching algorithms for PCMbased caches, and develop a novel hash-based write caching scheme called HALO to improve random write performance of hard disks. To address the limited durability of PCM devices and solve the degraded spatial locality in traditional wear-leveling techniques, we further propose novel PCM management algorithms that provide effective wear-leveling while maximizing access parallelism. We have evaluated this PCM-based hybrid storage architecture using applications with a diverse set of I/O access patterns. Our experimental results demonstrate that the HALO caching scheme leads to an average reduction of 36.8% in execution time compared to the LRU caching scheme, and that the SFC wear leveling extends the lifetime of PCM by a factor of 21.6.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2012 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, MASCOTS 2012
Pages451-458
Number of pages8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event2012 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, MASCOTS 2012 - Washington, DC, United States
Duration: Aug 7 2012Aug 9 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2012 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, MASCOTS 2012

Conference

Conference2012 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, MASCOTS 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWashington, DC
Period08/7/1208/9/12

Keywords

  • Phase change memory (PCM)
  • wear leveling
  • write cache

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