Object-based SCM: An Efficient Interface for Storage Class Memories

Appeared in Proceedings of the 27th IEEE Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies: Research Track (MSST 2011).

Abstract

Storage Class Memory (SCM) has become increasingly popular in enterprise systems as well as embedded and mobile systems. However, replacing hard drives with SCMs in current storage systems often forces either major changes in file systems or suboptimal performance, because the current block-based interface does not deliver enough information to the device to allow it to optimize data management for specific device characteristics such as the out-of-place update. To alleviate this problem and fully utilize different characteristics of SCMs, we propose the use of an object-based model that provides the hardware and firmware the ability to optimize performance for the underlying implementation, and allows drop-in replacement for devices based on new types of SCM. We discuss the design of object-based SCMs and implement an object-based flash memory prototype. By analyzing different design choices for several subsystems, such as data placement policies and index structures, we show that our object-based model provides comparable performance to other flash file systems while enabling advanced features such as object level reliability.

Publication date:
May 2011

Authors:
Yangwook Kang
Jingpei Yang
Ethan L. Miller

Projects:
Storage Class Memories

Available media

Full paper text: PDF

Bibtex entry

@inproceedings{kang-msst11,
  author       = {Yangwook Kang and Jingpei Yang and Ethan L. Miller},
  title        = {Object-based {SCM}: An Efficient Interface for Storage Class Memories},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 27th IEEE Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies: Research Track (MSST 2011)},
  month        = may,
  year         = {2011},
}