research-article

memif: Towards Programming Heterogeneous Memory Asynchronously

Authors:

Felix Xiaozhu Lin,

Xu LiuAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, Volume 44, Issue 2

Pages 369 - 383

https://doi.org/10.1145/2980024.2872401

Published: 25 March 2016 Publication History

Abstract

To harness a heterogeneous memory hierarchy, it is advantageous to integrate application knowledge in guiding frequent memory move, i.e., replicating or migrating virtual memory regions. To this end, we present memif, a protected OS service for asynchronous, hardware-accelerated memory move. Compared to the state of the art -- page migration in Linux, memif incurs low overhead and low latency; in order to do so, it not only redefines the semantics of kernel interface but also overhauls the underlying mechanisms, including request/completion management, race handling, and DMA engine configuration. We implement memif in Linux for a server-class system-on-chip that features heterogeneous memories. Compared to the current Linux page migration, memif reduces CPU usage by up to 15% for small pages and by up to 38x for large pages; in continuously serving requests, memif has no need for request batching and reduces latency by up to 63%. By crafting a small runtime atop memif, we improve the throughputs for a set of streaming workloads by up to 33%. Overall, memif has opened the door to software management of heterogeneous memory.

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Cited By

Yang DLiu HJin HZhang Y(2021)HMvisor: dynamic hybrid memory management for virtual machinesScience China Information Sciences10.1007/s11432-019-2729-564:9Online publication date: 19-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-019-2729-5
Wu KLi D(2021)Unimem: Runtime Data Management on Non-Volatile Memory-Based Heterogeneous Main Memory for High Performance ComputingJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-020-0942-z36:1(90-109)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-020-0942-z
Chen YPeng IPeng ZLiu XRen BMars JTang LXue JWu P(2020)ATMem: adaptive data placement in graph applications on heterogeneous memoriesProceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization10.1145/3368826.3377922(293-304)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368826.3377922
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Index Terms

memif: Towards Programming Heterogeneous Memory Asynchronously
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Parallel architectures

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 44, Issue 2

ASPLOS'16

May 2016

774 pages

ISSN:0163-5964

DOI:10.1145/2980024

Editor:
Doug DeGroot
acm dot org

Issue’s Table of Contents

ASPLOS '16: Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
March 2016
824 pages
ISBN:9781450340915
DOI:10.1145/2872362
General Chair:
Tom Conte
Georgia Tech, USA
,
Program Chair:
Yuanyuan Zhou
University of California, San Diego, USA

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Published: 25 March 2016

Published in SIGARCH Volume 44, Issue 2

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Yang DLiu HJin HZhang Y(2021)HMvisor: dynamic hybrid memory management for virtual machinesScience China Information Sciences10.1007/s11432-019-2729-564:9Online publication date: 19-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-019-2729-5
Wu KLi D(2021)Unimem: Runtime Data Management on Non-Volatile Memory-Based Heterogeneous Main Memory for High Performance ComputingJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-020-0942-z36:1(90-109)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-020-0942-z
Chen YPeng IPeng ZLiu XRen BMars JTang LXue JWu P(2020)ATMem: adaptive data placement in graph applications on heterogeneous memoriesProceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization10.1145/3368826.3377922(293-304)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368826.3377922
Kommareddy VHammond SHughes CSamih AAwad A(2019)Page migration support for disaggregated non-volatile memoriesProceedings of the International Symposium on Memory Systems10.1145/3357526.3357543(417-427)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3357526.3357543
Doudali TBlagodurov SVishnu AGurumurthi SGavrilovska AWeissman JButt ASmirni E(2019)KleioProceedings of the 28th International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing10.1145/3307681.3325398(37-48)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2019
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Laghari MUnat D(2017)Object Placement for High Bandwidth Memory Augmented with High Capacity Memory2017 29th International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing (SBAC-PAD)10.1109/SBAC-PAD.2017.24(129-136)Online publication date: Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/SBAC-PAD.2017.24
Kim H(2024)Compiler-assisted data placement for heterogeneous memory systemsIEICE Electronics Express10.1587/elex.21.2024046021:19(20240460-20240460)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2024
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Bailleu MStavrakakis DRocha RChakraborty SGarg DBhatotia P(2024)Toast: A Heterogeneous Memory Management SystemProceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques10.1145/3656019.3676944(53-65)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
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Michailidis TSwanson SZhao JSerafini MXu H(2022)PMShifterProceedings of the 13th ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems10.1145/3546591.3547523(1-8)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2022
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