Usage Scenarios for Byte-Addressable Persistent Memory in High-Performance and Data Intensive Computing

Byte-addressable persistent memory (B-APM) presents a new opportunity to bridge the performance gap between main memory and storage. In this paper, we present the usage scenarios for this new technology, based on the capabilities of Intel’s DCPMM. We outline some of the basic performance characteristics of DCPMM, and explain how it can be configured and used to address the needs of memory and I/O intensive applications in the HPC and data intensive domains. Two decision trees are presented to advise on the configuration options for B-APM; their use is illustrated with two examples. We show that the flexibility of the technology has the potential to be truly disruptive, not only because of the performance improvements it can deliver, but also because it allows systems to cater for wider range of applications on homogeneous hardware.