• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2010

In this paper, we adopt Storage Class Memory, which is next-generation non-volatile RAM technology, as part of main memory parallel to DRAM, and exploit the SCM+DRAM main memory system from the dependability perspective. Our system provides instant system on/off without bootstrapping, dynamic selection of process persistence or non-persistence, and fast recovery from power and/or software failure. The advantages of our system are that it does not cause the problems of checkpointing, i.e., heavy overhead and recovery delay. Furthermore, as the system enables full application transparency, our system is easily applicable to real-world environments. As proof of the concept, we implemented a system based on a commodity Linux kernel 2.6.21 operating system. We verify that the persistence enabled processes continue to execute instantly at system off-on without any state and/or data loss. Therefore, we conclude that our system can improve availability and reliability.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.183-189
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• 2015

Recently, computer systems have encountered difficulties in making further progress due to the technical limitations of DRAM based main memory technologies. This has motivated the development of next generation memory technologies that have high density and non-volatility. However, these new memory technologies also have their own intrinsic limitations, making it difficult for them to currently be used as main memory. In order to overcome these problems, we propose a hybrid main memory system, namely HyMN, which utilizes the merits of next generation memory technologies by combining two types of memory: Write-Affable RAM(WAM) and Read-Affable RAM(ReAM). In so doing, we analyze the appropriate WAM size for HyMN, at which we can avoid the performance degradation. Further, we show that the execution time performance of HyMN, which provides an additional benefit of durability against unexpected blackouts, is almost comparable to legacy DRAM systems under normal operations.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.15-20
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• 2016

Write amplification is a critical factor that limits the stable performance of flash-based storage systems. To reduce write amplification, this paper presents a new technique that cooperatively manages data in flash storage and nonvolatile memory (NVM). Our scheme basically considers NVM as the cache of flash storage, but allows the original data in flash storage to be invalidated if there is a cached copy in NVM, which can temporarily serve as the original data. This scheme eliminates the copy-out operation for a substantial number of cached data, thereby enhancing garbage collection efficiency. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme reduces the copy-out overhead of garbage collection by 51.4% and decreases the standard deviation of response time by 35.4% on average.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.181-186
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• 2015

With the rapid growth of semiconductor technologies, small-sized devices with powerful computing abilities are becoming a reality. As this environment has a limit on power supply, NVM storage that has a high density and low power consumption is preferred to HDD or SSD. However, legacy software layers optimized for HDDs should be revisited. Specifically, as storage performance approaches DRAM performance, existing I/O mechanisms and software configurations should be reassessed. This paper explores the challenges and implications of using NVM storage with a broad range of experiments. We measure the performance of a system with NVM storage emulated by DRAM with proper timing parameters and compare it with that of HDD storage environments under various configurations. Our experimental results show that even with storage as fast as DRAM, the performance gain is not large for read operations as current I/O mechanisms do a good job hiding the slow performance of HDD. To assess the potential benefit of fast storage media, we change various I/O configurations and perform experiments to quantify the effects of existing I/O mechanisms such as buffer caching, read-ahead, synchronous I/O, direct I/O, block I/O, and byte-addressable I/O on systems with NVM storage.