Software-implemented Dynamic Reconfigurable Hybrid Memory Architecture

In the era of big data,the increasing amount of data puts higher demands on the performance of computer systems.The Non-Volatile Memory(NVM)is expected to replace the traditional Dynamic Random Access Memory(DRAM)due to its advantages of high density,low static power consumption,and so on.However,NVM's higher write latency,write power consumption,and limited write life,make it impossible to completely replace DRAM as the main memory of computers.Academics propose to combine DRAM and NVM into the hybrid memory to merge the advantages of DRAM and NVM.However,hybrid memory still has many problems to be solved.Aiming at the performance problem of hybrid memory,a software-implemented dynamic reconfigurable hybrid memory architecture is proposed to improve the utilization of DRAM in hybrid memory and reduce access to NVM,thus effectively improving the performance and life of hybrid memory.First,a page frequency monitoring mechanism for processes in the real machine environment is designed.By periodically scanning and counting the Access bit in the page table of processes,the page hotness can be obtained.The hot and cold pages in the hybrid memory can be effectively divided and the NVM pages that are high-frequency accessed can be dynamically filtering out.Then,a page migration mechanism for hybrid memory of different structures is designed,which can migrate memory pages between different memory nodes,place pages that are high-frequency accessed in DRAM and that are low-frequency accessed in NVM.Increasing read and write traffic to DRAM can improve the overall performance of hybrid memory.Finally,a dynamic reconfiguration mechanism based on the threshold is designed.By calculating the proportion of the hot pages to all monitored memory pages,the hybrid memory architecture can switch between different hybrid memory structures according to the relationship between the ratio of hot pages and the threshold.The experimental results of several standard test programs show that,compared to ordinary hybrid memory systems,the software-implemented dynamic reconfigurable hybrid memory architecture can effectively increase the number of memory accesses to DRAM in the hybrid memory,which improves the overall performance of the hybrid memory.