An Architecture for High Performance Computing and Data Systems Using Byte-Addressable Persistent Memory

Abstract

Non-volatile and byte-addressable memory technology with performance close to main memory has the potential to revolutionise computing systems in the near future. Such memory technology provides the potential for extremely large memory regions (i.e. >3 TB per server), very high performance I/O, and new ways of storing and sharing data for applications and workflows. This paper proposes hardware and system software architectures that have been designed to exploit such memory for High Performance Computing and High Performance Data Analytics systems, along with descriptions of how applications could benefit from such hardware, and initial performance results on a system with Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory.