Characterizing and Modeling Non-Volatile Memory Systems

Scalable server-grade non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) DIMMs became commercially available with the release of Intel’s Optane DIMM. Recent studies on Optane DIMM systems unveil discrepant performance characteristics, compared to what many researchers assumed before the product release. Most of these studies focus on system software design and performance analysis. To thoroughly analyze the source of this discrepancy and facilitate real-NVRAM-aware architecture design, we propose a framework that characterizes and models Optane DIMM’s microarchitecture. Our framework consists of a Low-level profilEr for Non-volatile memory Systems (LENS) and a Validated cycle-Accurate NVRAM Simulator (VANS). LENS allows us to comprehensively analyze the performance attributes and reverse engineer NVRAM microarchitectures. Based on LENS characterization, we develop VANS, which models the sophisticated microarchitecture design of Optane DIMM, and is validated by comparing with the detailed performance characteristics of Optane-DIMM-attached Intel servers. VANS adopts a modular design that can be easily modified to extend to other NVRAM architecture designs; it can also be attached to full-system simulators, such as gem51. By using LENS and VANS, we develop two architectural optimizations on top of Optane DIMM, Lazy Cache and Pre-translation, which significantly improve cloud workload performance.