A Survey on the Challenges of Implementing
Physical Memory Pools^{a, b}

Heather Craddock⁺, Lakshmi Prasanna Konudula, and Gökhan Kul

Division of Physical and Computational Sciences

Delaware State University, 1200 N. DuPont Hwy, Dover, Delaware, 19901, USA

{hcraddock, lkonudula, gkul}@desu.edu

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.

Keywords: cloud operating systems, hardware virtualization, memory pools, memory protection

a: This paper is an extension of “The Case for Physical Memory Pools: A Vision Paper” that appeared in the proceedings of International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD) 2019, San Diego, California, USA.

b: Both Heather Craddock and Lakshmi Prasanna Konudula should be considered joint first authors.

+: Corresponding author: Heather Craddock
Division of Physical and Computational Sciences, Delaware State University, Dover, Delaware, 19901, USA,

Tel: +1(302)857-6640, Web: http://delawaresec.com/, Email: hcraddock@desu.edu

Journal of Internet Services and Information Security (JISIS), 9(2): 57-71, May 2019

DOI: 10.22667/JISIS.2019.05.31.057 [pdf]