• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2016

Density of Phase-Change Memory (PCM) devices has been doubled through the employment of multi-level cell (MLC) technology. However, this doubled-capacity comes in the expense of severe performance degradation, as compared to the conventional single-level cell (SLC) PCM. This negative effect on the performance of the MLC PCM detracts from the potential benefits of the MLC PCM. This paper introduces an efficient way of minimizing the performance degradation while maximizing the capacity benefits of the MLC PCM. To this end, we propose a location-aware hybrid management of SLC and MLC in compressed PCM main memory systems. Our trace-driven simulations using real application workloads demonstrate that the proposed technique enhances the performance and energy consumption by 45.1% and 46.5%, respectively, on the average, over the conventional technique that only uses a MLC PCM.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.741-749
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• 2014

Low power double data rate 2 non-volatile memory (LPDDR2-NVM) has been deemed the standard interface to connect non-volatile memory devices such as phase-change memory (PCM) directly to the main memory bus. However, most of the previous literature does not consider or overlook this standard interface. In this paper, we propose address phase skipping by reforming the way of interfacing with LPDDR2-NVM. To verify effectiveness and functionality, we also develop a system-level prototype that includes our customized LPDDR2-NVM controller and commercial PCM devices. Extensive simulations and measurements demonstrate up to a 3.6% memory access time reduction for commercial PCM devices and a 31.7% reduction with optimistic parameters of the PCM research prototypes in industries.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.9
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• pp.1071-1077
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• 2015

In this paper, we adopt PCM (phase-change memory) as a virtual memory swap device and present a new page replacement policy that considers the characteristics of PCM. Specifically, we aim to reduce the write traffic to PCM by considering the dirtiness of pages when making a replacement decision. The proposed policy tracks the dirtiness of a page at the granularity of a sub-page and replaces the least dirty page among the pages not recently used. Experimental results show that the proposed policy reduces the amount of data written to PCM by 22.9% on average and up to 73.7% compared to CLOCK. It also extends the lifespan of PCM by 49.0% and reduces the energy consumption of PCM by 3.0% on average.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.391-397
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• 2015

Nonvolatile memories in memory hierarchy have been investigated to reduce its energy consumption because nonvolatile memories consume zero leakage power in memory cells. One of the difficulties is, however, that the endurance of most nonvolatile memory technologies is much shorter than the conventional SRAM and DRAM technology. This has limited its usage to only the low levels of a memory hierarchy, e.g., disks, that is far from the CPU. In this paper, we study the use of a new type of nonvolatile memories - the Phase Change Memory (PCM) with a DRAM buffer system as the main memory. Our design reduced the total energy of a DRAM main memory of the same capacity by 80%. These results indicate that it is feasible to use PCM technology in place of DRAM in the main memory for better energy efficiency.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.188-193
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• 2022

The energy efficiency of memory systems is an important task in designing future computer systems as memory capacity continues to increase to accommodate the growing big data. In this article, we present an energy-efficient last-level cache management policy for future mobile systems. The proposed policy makes use of low-power PCM (phase-change memory) as the main memory medium, and reduces the amount of data written to PCM, thereby saving memory energy consumptions. To do so, the policy keeps track of the modified cache lines within each cache block, and replaces the last-level cache block that incurs the smallest PCM writing upon cache replacement requests. Also, the policy considers the access bit of cache blocks along with the cache line modifications in order not to degrade the cache hit ratio. Simulation experiments using SPEC benchmarks show that the proposed policy reduces the power consumption of PCM memory by 22.7% on average without degrading performances.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.337-345
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• 2016

Recently, as the number of cores in computer systems has increased, the need for larger memory capacity has also increased. Unfortunately, dynamic random access memory (DRAM), popularly used as main memory for decades, now faces a scalability limitation. Phase change memory (PCM) is considered one of the strong alternatives to DRAM due to its advantages, such as high scalability, non-volatility, low idle power, and so on. However, since PCM suffers from short write endurance, direct use of PCM in main memory incurs a significant problem due to its short lifetime. To solve the lifetime limitation, many studies have focused on reducing the number of bit flips per write request. In this paper, we describe the PCM operating principles in detail and explore various bit flip reduction schemes. Also, we compare their performance in terms of bit reduction rate and lifetime improvement.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.68-76
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• 2015

Phase-change memory (PCM) is a promising technology that is anticipated to be used in the memory hierarchy of future computer systems. However, its access time is relatively slower than DRAM and it has limited endurance cycle. Due to this reason, PCM is being considered as a high-speed storage medium (like swap device) or long-latency memory. In this paper, we adopt PCM as a virtual memory swap device and present a new page replacement policy that considers the characteristics of PCM. Specifically, we aim to reduce the write traffic to PCM by considering the dirtiness of pages when making a replacement decision. The proposed replacement policy tracks the dirtiness of a page at the granularity of a sub-page and replaces the least dirty page among pages not recently used. Experimental results with various workloads show that the proposed policy reduces the amount of data written to PCM by 22.9% on average and up to 73.7% compared to CLOCK. It also extends the lifespan of PCM by 49.0% and reduces the energy consumption of PCM by 3.0% on average.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.330-338
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• 2016

Phase change memory (PCM) has been studied as an emerging memory technology for last-level cache (LLC) due to its extremely low leakage. However, it consumes high levels of energy in updating cells and its write endurance is limited. To relieve the write pressure of LLC, we propose a delta value indicator (DVI) by employing a small cache which stores the difference between the value currently stored and the value newly loaded. Since the write energy consumption of the small cache is less than the LLC, the energy consumption is reduced by access to the small cache instead of the LLC. In addition, the lifetime of the LLC is further extended because the number of write accesses to the LLC is decreased. To this end, a delta value indicator and controlling circuits are inserted into the LLC. The simulation results show a 26.8% saving of dynamic energy consumption and a 31.7% lifetime extension compared to a state-of-the-art scheme for PCM.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 2017

Due to the recent advances in Phage-Change Memory (PCM) technologies, a new memory hierarchy of computer systems with PCM is expected to appear. In this paper, we present a new page replacement policy that adopts PCM as a high speed swap device. As PCM has limited write endurance, our goal is to minimize the amount of data written to PCM. To do so, we defer the eviction of dirty pages in proportion to their dirtiness. However, excessive preservation of dirty pages in memory may deteriorate the page fault rate, especially when the memory capacity is not enough to accommodate full working-set pages. Thus, our policy monitors the current working-set size of the system, and controls the deferring level of dirty pages not to degrade the system performances. Simulation experiments show that the proposed policy reduces the write traffic to PCM by 160% without performance degradations.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.117-123
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• 2016

In general, PCM (Phase Change Memory) is unsuitable as a main memory because it has limitations: high read/write latency and low endurance. However, the DRAM&PCM hybrid memory with the same level is one of the effective structures for a next generation main memory because it can utilize an advantage of both DRAM and PCM. Therefore, it needs an effective page management method for exploiting each memory characteristics dynamically and adaptively. So we aim reducing an access time and write count of PCM by using an effective page replacement. According to our simulation, the proposed algorithm for the DRAM&PCM hybrid can reduce the PCM access count by around 60% and the PCM write count by 42% given the same PCM size, compared with Clock-DWF algorithm.