RDMA with PM: Software Mechanisms for Enabling Persistent Memory Replication

With the emergence of persistent memory, the need to replicate data across multiple clusters arises. RDMA to persistent memory provides a mechanism to replicate data remotely but requires SW to implicitly make previously written data persistent. This presentation will review key HW components involved in RDMA and introduce several SW mechanisms that can be utilized with RDMA with PM. The discussion will conclude with a review of performance implications of each solution and methods that can be utilized to model the latencies associated with RDMA and PM.

Learning Objectives

Introduce HW Architecture concepts of Intel platforms that will affect RDMA usages with PM
Introduce SW Mechanisms that can be utilized in RDMA Application SW to make RDMA Write data persistent
Review detailed sequences, platform performance implications, and Pros and Cons for each proposed SW Mechanism
Intel platform configuration details for using RDMA with PM
Overview of Intel’s SW Application for evaluating RDMA performance and SW modeling of new Intel CPU instructions for use with PM