UC Santa Cruz

Memory systems are evolving in a multitude of ways in state-of-the-art computer systems and in computer architecture. The changes range from the low-level underlying technology used to implement memory, to the high-level ways in which memory systems are structured and organized. These changes have tremendous implications on the fundamental performance of computer systems because of how integral a role memory plays in the design of these systems. Traditionally, the memory hierarchy has been the bottleneck for how well computer systems perform and the resources they consume. Computer architects face significant challenges in meeting the growing memory demands and efficiently integrating these new technologies. Computer architecture must adapt to these changes in a high-performance, cost-effective way. Modern problems require modern solutions.

This thesis proposes efficient architecture solutions for two primary contemporary developments in memory: persistent memory and memory networks. Persistent memory is a subset of nonvolatile memory with similar properties of storage systems. As such, it comes with not only many benefits, but also a number of challenges inherent to both storage systems but to new technologies in general. Similarly, memory networking shares similar properties to network on-chip as well as computer networking design. Persistent memory and memory networks can go hand in hand to implement high performance computing or database systems to meet the demands of current applications.