Flip-N-Write a simple deterministic technique to improve PRAM write performance, energy and endurance

The phase-change random access memory (PRAM) technology is fast maturing to production levels. Main advantages of PRAM are non-volatility, byte addressability, in-place programmability, low-power operation, and higher write endurance than that of current flash memories. However, the relatively low w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:2009 42nd Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO) pp. 347 - 357
Main Authors: Cho, Sangyeun, Lee, Hyunjin
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 12.12.2009
IEEE
Series:ACM Conferences
Subjects:
Bandwidth
Computer systems organization > Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks
Flash memory
General and reference > Cross-computing tools and techniques > Performance
Hardware > Integrated circuits > Semiconductor memory
Inspection
memory write performance
Microarchitecture
Networks > Network performance evaluation
Nonvolatile memory
Permission
Phase change memory
Phase change random access memory
Random access memory
Scalability
phase-change memory
memory write performance
ISBN:9781605587981, 1605587982
ISSN:1072-4451
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The phase-change random access memory (PRAM) technology is fast maturing to production levels. Main advantages of PRAM are non-volatility, byte addressability, in-place programmability, low-power operation, and higher write endurance than that of current flash memories. However, the relatively low write bandwidth and the less-than-desirable write endurance of PRAM remain room for improvement. This paper proposes and evaluates Flip-N-Write, a simple microarchitectural technique to replace a PRAM write operation with a more efficient read-modify-write operation. On a write, after quick bit-by-bit inspection of the original data word and the new data word, Flip-N-Write writes either the new data word or the "flipped" value of it. Flip-N-Write introduces a single bit associated with each PRAM word to indicate whether the PRAM word has been flipped or not. We analytically and experimentally show that the proposed technique reduces the PRAM write time by half, more than doubles the write endurance, and achieves commensurate savings in write energy under the same instantaneous write power constraint. Due to its simplicity, Flip-N-Write is straightforward to implement within a PRAM device.
ISBN:9781605587981
1605587982
ISSN:1072-4451
DOI:10.1145/1669112.1669157