Memory that never forgets: emerging nonvolatile memory and the implication for architecture design

作者：Sun, Guangyu^*; Zhao, Jishen; Poremba, Matt; Xu, Cong; Xie, Yuan^*

来源：National Science Review, 2018, 5(4): 577-592.

DOI：10.1093/nsr/nwx082

• non-volatile memory
• cache
• main memory
• energy efficiency

In order to mitigate the problem of the 'memory wall', various emerging nonvolatile memory (NVM) technologies have been proposed to replace the traditional ones. These emerging NVMs include spin torque transfer random access memory, PCRAM, resistive random access memory, racetrack memory, etc. Compared to traditional memory technologies, they have the advantages of near-zero standby power, high storage density and nonvolatility, which make them competitive for future memory hierarchy design. However, it is inefficient to directly apply these NVMs in existing memory architectures. On the one hand, these NVMs have their own limitations, such as long write latency, high write energy, limited write numbers, etc. Thus, proper architecture modification is required to adopt them into the traditional memory hierarchy. On the other hand, the unique features of these NVMs allow new memory architectures in memory subsystems and also introduce new challenges to be solved at the same time. In this paper, we not only review various emerging NVMs but also study typical related work on these topics to investigate their implications for memory architecture design.

• 出版日期2018-7
• 单位北京大学