Storage Class Memory Aware Data Management

Storage Class Memory (SCM) is here to stay. It has characteristics that place it in a class apart both from main memory and hard disk drives. Software and systems, architectures and algorithms need to be revisited to extract the maximum benefit from SCM. In this paper, we describe work that is being done in the area of Storage Class Memory aware Data Management at IBM. We specifically cover the challenges in placement of objects in storage and memory systems which have NAND flash (one kind of SCM) in a hierarchy or in the same level with other storage devices. We also focus on the challenges of adapting data structures which are inherently main memory based to work out of a memory hierarchy consisting of DRAM and flash. We describe how these could be addressed for a popular main memory data structure, namely the Bloom filter.