Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Olaf Spinczyk
• Subject Area: Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502616169

Ever since pioneers like Konrad Zuse and John von Neumann laid the foundation for today’s computer architectures, memory has been a central component in every system. The hardware technology of memories has evolved over the decades, leading to greater capacities and higher speeds, but essential properties of the interface between hardware and software have remained the same: Main memories were usually volatile, passive and largely homogeneous. These typical properties are now so firmly anchored in the expectations of software developers that they manifest in their products.We are currently observing a wave of innovations in the field of memory that nullify these assumptions and, in this sense, are disruptive for the entire software industry and various sub-domains of computer science. For example, current server processors allow the use of non-volatile main memory modules with a low price and very high capacity. An increasing number of embedded computer systems is also being equipped with non-volatile memories, e.g. on the basis of FRAM technology. In the area of high-performance computing, there are platforms with hybrid memories that combine extremely fast "high-bandwidth memories" with classic memory modules. Intensive research and development is also being done on "in-memory" and "near-memory" computing approaches, which abandon the traditional Von Neumann architecture. They allow a large number of parallel operations on data objects in or close to the memory with an enormous potential for performance improvements.Overall, these and other ongoing innovations in main memory technology promise various improvements for all computer systems, for example lower energy consumption, higher processing power, more reliability, and simplifications and thus cost reductions. However, how to make use of all these new possibilities for existing and future software and thus overall systems, is largely unclear.The aim of this priority program is therefore to explore the potentials of ongoing developments in the field of main memory technologies and architectures. Despite the disruptive nature of these technologies, systems software and applications shall be enabled to fully exploit them. In order to master disruptive memory technologies and their impact on the overall memory hierarchy, research efforts are required on all levels of the classic system software stack.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2377: Disruptive Main-Memory Technologies