Overview of Persistent Memory in Distributed Systems Architecture -- Past, Present, Future

Abstract

During the past half-century, persistent memory has had an interesting history and relationship to the design of computing and storage systems. In this talk, the history of systems design using persistent memory (as well as non-persistent, aka volatile memory) will be briefly discussed, as well as approaches to data storage. The majority of the talk will focus on two areas. First, the current state of the persistent memory art, as well as a taxonomy of persistent memory. Second, current methods and issues surrounding the use of persistent memory in systems, in particular distributed systems. The relationship between processing (e.g. CPUs) and persistent memory will be discussed in detail, illustrating certain challenges and opportunities with regard to several forms of distributed computation, in particular concerning large-scale multi-processor designs using shared persistent memory technology.