POSIX-based Operating System in the environment of NVM/SCM memory

TL;DR

This paper examines the impact of POSIX-based OS architecture on performance in NVM/SCM memory environments, highlighting critical bottlenecks in system calls that hinder efficiency and suggesting that POSIX may be fundamentally inefficient for future non-volatile memory systems.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of how POSIX system calls affect performance in NVM/SCM memory environments and identifies key areas where optimization is needed.

Findings

OS and metadata system calls are major optimization targets.

Synchronization system calls are the most time-consuming overhead.

POSIX approach may be fundamentally inefficient for NVM/SCM memory.

Abstract

Modern Operating Systems are typically POSIX-compliant. The system calls are the fundamental layer of interaction between user-space applications and the OS kernel and its implementation of fundamental abstractions and primitives used in modern computing. The next generation of NVM/SCM memory raises critical questions about the efficiency of modern OS architecture. This paper investigates how the POSIX API drives performance for a system with NVM/SCM memory. We show that OS and metadata related system calls represent the most important area of optimization. However, the synchronization related system calls (poll(), futex(), wait4()) are the most time-consuming overhead that even a RAMdisk platform fails to eliminate. Attempting to preserve the POSIX-based approach will likely result in fundamental inefficiencies for any future applications of NVM/SCM memory.