Hi I'm Chet Douglas.
In this video, I'll explain persistent memory over fabric
or PMOF and why it will become a key technology for cloud
and high performance computing.
Pure math is largely rooted in persistent memory.
Persistent memory, sometimes called storage class memory,
is only recently available on modern hardware.
This is due to the emergence of new technologies
such as Intel's 3D cross point memory.
In this video, we will discuss how
to utilize PMOF to move data in and out
of persistent memory attached to many physical systems.
If you'd like to learn the basics in utilizing
persistent memory on a single physical system
and how to move data efficiently into and out of that memory,
check out the What is Persistent Memory videos provided
in the links.
Cloud in high performance computing
requires data to be moved between hundreds or even
thousands of physical systems.
Data may be replicated across multiple nodes for redundancy
and protection.
Or the data can be split across physical systems
for performance.
High performance networking fabrics
provide this interconnect between these physical systems.
The fabrics utilize network adapter hardware
in each physical system to move the data using
a point to point connection.
Two types of fabrics are typically used.
The first is TCP/IP based networks
that utilize the CPU on each end of the connection
to move the data.
The second is remote DMA cable networks or RDMA.
It is a more efficient transport that will be utilized in PMOF.
It utilizes a special network adapter hardware or arnix
to offload the data movement from the CPU
to each system's network adapter.
This improves system performance by allowing the CPUs
to data process and the arnix to move data between systems.
When moving data between systems,
volatile DRAM memory is typically utilized.
Once the data is written into the DRAM
on remote physical system, the system
is notified that the data has been moved,
and the local CPU can begin processing the new data.
Now with persistent memory over fabric,
it is possible to replace the vault of DRAM
in the system with persistent memory.
This allows us to utilize RDMA with persistent memory instead
of DRAM.
PMOF adheres to the storage networking industry association
or SNIA programming model which requires that any CPU caches be
flushed before the persistence of the data can be guaranteed.
After data is written into the persistent memory using RDMA,
the software will need to flush the node CPU
caches before the software can assume
the data to be persistent.
Alternatively, if the system can bypass CPU caches
when moving the data, CPU flushes are no longer required.
PMOF supplies two solutions to accomplish this.
The persistent memory development kit or PMDK
provides a native PMOF solution that
supports the standard high-performance networking
protocols.
PMDK supports one simple PMOF use case-- persistent memory
replication from a local system to one or more remote systems.
This provides high-performance data redundancy
across multiple feathered events.
Once your application is ported to PMDK,
enabling PMOF to replicate persistent memory
is done with a simple set of updates
to existing PMDK configuration files.
No further changes to your application
are required to make use of this powerful feature.
Thanks for watching.
To learn more, check out the Persistent Memory Development
Kit playlist and see the links provided.
Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to the Intel
software YouTube channel.
Thank you.