Integrating Flash and Phase Change Memory into Memory/Storage Hierarchies for Enhancing High-End and Data-Intensive Computing

Center for Research on Intelligent Storage (CRIS)

Proposal #1127829

This proposal seeks funding for the Center for Research on Intelligent Storage (CRIS) at the University of Minnesota ? Twin Cities. Funding Requests for Fundamental Research are authorized by an NSF approved solicitation, NSF 10-601. The solicitation invites I/UCRCs to submit proposals for support of industry-defined fundamental research.

Migration away from Hard Disk Drives (HDD) to solid state drives (SDDs) composed of NAND flash memory is viewed as essential to meeting access speed, energy, reliability, and mobility requirements of emerging data storage systems. The proposed effort seeks to investigate architectures for the integration of NAND flash and Phase Change Memory (PCM) ? a new technology that is highly scalable with improved performance (I/O, erase, write endurance). The proposed research plans to address design issues peculiar to the integration of these two technologies with the intent of developing new architectures, algorithms and analytic tools with which to arrive at innovative solutions that will enable use of flash-based memory devices in high-performance and low-power computer systems and data intensive applications.

NAND-PCM architectures have the potential to enhance the performance of high-end as wella s data-intensive computing while addressing increasing the increasing need to reduce energy consumption. Outcomes of the proposed research have the potential for major impact in the US computing and data systems sector. The proposed effort has garnered support from one center member, Los Alamos Nation Lab, for execution of the proposed work. This industry sector will further benefit via dissemination of the results through the Center membership and the extension of the centers project portfolio into this area. Opportunities are planned for graduate and undergraduate students including those in underrepresented groups.