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Category: Persistent Memory

Up to the Challenge!

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The SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM Special Interest Group announced a programming challenge for NVDIMM-based systems in Q4 of 2019.  Participants get free online access to persistent memory systems based at the SNIA Technology Center using NVDIMM-Ns provided by SIG members AgigA Tech, Intel, SMART Modular, and Supermicro.  The goal of the challenge is to spark interest by developers in this new technology so they can understand more clearly how persistent memory applications can be developed and applied in 2020 environments and beyond.

Response to the NVDIMM Programming Challenge has been very positive.  Entrants to date have backgrounds from no experience programming persistent memory to those who develop persistent memory applications as part of their day jobs.

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Judging Has Begun – Submit Your Entry for the NVDIMM Programming Challenge!

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We’re 11 months in to the Persistent Memory Hackathon program, and over 150 software developers have taken the tutorial and tried their hand at programming to persistent memory systems.   AgigA Tech, Intel,  SMART Modular, and Supermicro, members of the SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM SIG, have now placed persistent memory systems with NVDIMM-Ns into the SNIA Technology Center as the backbone of the first SNIA NVDIMM Programming Challenge.

Interested in participating?  Send an email to PMhackathon@snia.org to get your credentials.  And do so quickly, as the first round of review for the SNIA NVDIMM Programming Challenge is now open.  Read More

It’s a Wrap for SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative at Flash Memory Summit 2019

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A Best of Show award, over 12 hours of content, three days of demos, and a new program drawing attention to persistent memory programming completed – Flash Memory Summit 2019 is officially a success!

SNIA volunteers were again recognized for their hard work developing standards for datacenters and storage professionals with a “Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology” FMS Best of Show award. This year, it was SNIA’s Object Drive Technical Work Group who received kudos for the SNIA Technical Position Key Value Storage API Specification.  Jay Kramer, head of the FMS awards program, presented the award to Bill Martin, Chair of the Object Drive TWG, commenting “Key value store technology can enable NVM storage devices to map and store data more efficiently and with enhanced performance, which is of paramount significance to facilitate computational storage.  Flash Memory Summit is proud to recognize the SNIA Object Drive Technical Work Group (TWG) for creating the SNIA Technical Position Key Value Storage API Specification Version 1.0 defining an application programming interface (API) for key value storage devices and making this available to the public for download.

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SNIA at Flash Memory Summit 2019 – Your Guide Here!

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SNIA technical work and education advances will play a prominent role in the program at the 2019 Flash Memory Summit, August 5-8, 2019, in Santa Clara, CA.  Over 40 speakers will present on key standards activities and education initiatives, including the first ever FMS Persistent Memory Hackathon hosted by SNIA.  Check out your favorite technology (or all), and learn what SNIA is doing in these sessions:

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Register for the PIRL Conference Today

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Registration is now open for the upcoming Persistent Programming in Real Life (PIRL) Conference – July 22-23, 2019 on the campus of the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

The 2019 PIRL event features a collaboration between UCSD Computer Science and Engineering, the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory, and the SNIA to bring industry leaders in programming and developing persistent memory applications together for a two-day discussion on their experiences.

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Your Questions Answered – Applications Take Advantage of Persistent Memory Webcast

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We hope you had time to check out our recent webcast on Applications Take Advantage of Persistent Memory.  Raghu Kulkarni of Viking Technology, a member of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative, did a great job laying the foundation for an understanding of Persistent Memory today, just in time for the SNIA Persistent Memory Summit.

You can catch up on videos of Summit talks, along with the slides presented, here.

During the webcast, we had many interesting questions.  Now, as promised, Raghu provides the answers.  Happy reading, and we hope to see you at one of our upcoming webcasts or events.

Q.  Does NVDIMM-N encryption lower the performance levels that you presented?

A.  It typically depends on the implementation and differs from each vendor. Generally speaking, Save and Restore operations will increase by a small factor – less than 10%.  Products from some vendors, like Viking, will not see a performance degradation as it is offset by a faster transfer rate

Q.  What are the read/write bandwidth capabilities of NVDIMM-N? How does that compare to Intel’s Persistent Memory?

A.  For Byte-addressable mode, NVDIMM-N in theory has the same high performance as DRAM, around 100ns. With the latest Linux drivers in DAX mode, NVDIMM-N are still expected to be better than Intel’s Persistent Memory.

Q.  On the use cases, what are the use cases when Persistent Memory is attached to an accelerator chip compared to a Processor attached setup?

A.  Mainly to accelerate the performance by storing the metadata or even data in Persistent Memory, so that the request can be acknowledged immediately without having to wait for commits to SSD/HDD. It also saves the rebuild time, which is a common practice for volatile memory.

Q.  How does BIOS/MRC work when a Persistent Memory is attached to an accelerator (ASIC/FPGA/GPU) over PCIe, when trying to extended/increase the memory for the processor?

A.  System BIOS will not detect the Persistent Memory sitting on PCIe; it only discovers Persistent Memory installed in DIMM slots. FPGA/ASIC, etc. have to build their own bottom up code to detect and present the Persistent Memory on PCIe depending on the use case.

Q.  Do we need application changes to take advantage of Persistent Memory-aware file storage? how does it compare against the DAX mode?

A.  To take advantage of the low latency/high performance nature of Persistent Memory, it would be beneficial to modify the applications. However, one can still leverage the existing IO stack if modifying the application is not an option. Check out pmem.io for pre-built libraries that can be directly integrated into applications.

Q.  Should the Persistent Memory usage be compared against the Storage or Memory. Which is a more relevant use case for Persistent Memory?

A.  Typically, a media that is Byte-addressable is called Persistent Memory (PM); however, you can also access it in Block mode. Again, depending on the application needs, use case, and other system level factors it can be used in either modes.  However, you will find best performance when accessing in Byte-addressable/Load-Store mode.

 

 

Hacking with the U

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It’s now less than three weeks for the next SNIA Persistent Memory Hackathon and Workshop.  Our next workshop will be held in conjunction with the 10th Annual Non-Volatile Memory Workshop (http://nvmw.ucsd.edu/) at the University of California, San Diego on Sunday, March 10th from 2:00pm to 5:30pm.

The Hackathon at NVMW19 provides software developers with an understanding of the different tiers and modes of persistent memory, and gives an overview of the standard software libraries that are available to access persistent memory.  Attendees will have access to system configured with persistent memory, software libraries, and sample source code. A variety of mentors will be available to provide tutorials and guide participants in the development of code. Learn more here.

In the last workshop, the feedback from the attendees pointed to a desire to work longer on code after the tutorial ended.  We will ensure that all the Hackathon attendees will have access to their environment through the length of the conference. So any participant in the Sunday session will be able to continue work until the conference completion on Tuesday afternoon.  While there won’t be an opportunity for formal follow-up, we’re planning an informal meet-up the final day of the conference. Stay tuned for details.

For those not familiar with NVMW, the program is replete with the latest in non-volatile memory research, which enables attendees to understand the practical advances in software development for persistence.  The workshop facilitates the exchange of ideas and advances collaboration and knowledge of the use of persistent memory. Registration for the conference is affordable, and grants are available for university student attendees.

For those not able to get to San Diego in March, enjoy the weather that obviously won’t be anywhere near as nice where you live.  Oh, sorry. For those not able to get to San Diego in March, SNIA is working on the next opportunities for a formal hackathon. But we can’t do it alone.  If you have a group of programmers interested in learning persistent memory development, SNIA would consider coming to you with a Host a Hackathon. We can provide, or even train, mentors to get you started, and show you how to build your own cloud-based development environment.  You’ll get an introduction to coding, and you’ll be left with some great examples to build your own applications. Contact SNIA at PMhackathon@snia.org for more details and visit our PM Programming Hackathon webpage for the latest updates.

Opportunity for Persistent Memory is Now

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It’s very rare that there is a significant change in computer architecture, especially one that is nearly immediately pervasive across the breadth of a market segment.  It’s even more rare when a fundamental change such as this is supported in a way that software developers can quickly adapt to existing software architecture. Most significant transitions require a ground-up rethink to achieve performance or reliability gains, and the cost-benefit analysis generally pushes a transition to the new thing be measured in multiple revisions as opposed to one, big jump.

In the last decade the growth of persistent memory has bucked this trend.  The introduction of the solid-state disk made an immediate impact on existing software, especially in the server market.  Any program that relied on multiple, small-data, read/write cycles to disk recognized significant performance increases. In cases such as multi-tiered databases, the software found a, “new tier,” of storage nearly automatically and started partitioning data to it.  In an industry where innovation takes years, improvement took a matter of months to proliferate across new deployments.

While the SSD is now a standard consideration there is unexplored opportunity in solid-state storage.  The NVDIMM form factor has been in existence for quite some time, providing data persistence significantly closer to processing units in the modern server and workstation.  Many developers, however, are not aware that programming models already exist to easily incorporate some simple performance and reliability, both for byte and block access in programs.  Moreover, new innovations of persistent memory are on the horizon that will increase the density and performance of DIMM form factors.

Perhaps it’s time that more software architecture should be working on adapting this exciting technology.  The barriers to innovation are very low, and opportunity is significant. Over the year 2019, SNIA will be sponsoring the delivery of several workshops dedicated to opening up persistent memory programming to the developer community.  The first of these will be a Persistent Memory Programming Hackathon at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara CA on January 23, 2019, the day before the SNIA Persistent Memory Summit.   Developers will have the opportunity to work with experienced software architects to understand how to quickly adapt code to use new persistent memory modes in a hackathon format.  Learn more and register at this link.

Don’t miss the opportunity to move on a strategic software inflection point ahead of the competition.  Consider attending the 2019 SNIA Persistent Memory Summit and exploring the opportunity with persistent memory.