Volume 9 - Issue 2
A Survey on the Challenges of Implementing Physical Memory Pools
- Heather Craddock
Division of Physical and Computational Sciences Delaware State University, 1200 N. DuPont Hwy, Dover, Delaware, 19901, USA.
hcraddock@desu.edu
- Lakshmi Prasanna Konudula
Division of Physical and Computational Sciences Delaware State University, 1200 N. DuPont Hwy, Dover, Delaware, 19901, USA.
lkonudula@desu.edu
- Gokhan Kul
Division of Physical and Computational Sciences Delaware State University, 1200 N. DuPont Hwy, Dover, Delaware, 19901, USA.
gkul@desu.edu
Keywords: cloud operating systems, hardware virtualization, memory pools, memory protection
Abstract
Cloud computing has been rapidly expanding in the last decade, and has become one of the most
heavily researched topics in computing; yet despite significant hardware developments, server architecture
maintains a monolithic structure that limits the capabilities of cloud-based systems. Memory
limitations force cloud providers to add more monolithic servers to their data centers every day,
and demanding software systems may require specially designed servers. In this article, we identify
enabling technologies for physical memory pools such as OS design, distributed shared memory
structures and virtualization with regards to their relevance and impact on eliminating memory limits,
and we discuss the challenges for physical memory pools which can be used by multiple servers.