A persistent problem: Managing pointers in NVM

Abstract

Byte-addressable non-volatile memory (NVM) placed alongside DRAM promises a fundamental shift in software abstractions, yet many approaches to using NVM promise merely incremental improvement by relying on old interfaces and archaic abstractions. We assert that redesigning the core programming model presented by the operating system is vital to best exploiting this technology. We are developing Twizzler, an OS that presents an effective programming model for NVM sufficient to construct persistent data structures that can be easily and globally shared without serialization costs. We consider and evolve a key-value store that runs on Twizzler, and demonstrate how our programming model improves programmability with early experiments indicating performance need not be lost and may be improved.