Kai-Uwe Sattler (TU Ilmenau)
For many years, database systems worked successfully with a simple abstraction: data is stored persistently in pages on disk and is loaded into volatile memory for processing. Because disks are much slower than memory, a bufferpool handles the efficient management of the active set of pages by implementing sophisticated eviction strategies.
Today, modern memory and storage technologies have radically changed the landscape. In-memory database systems allow keeping most of the data in memory and have fostered the design and development of memory- and cache-optimized data structures, new technologies such as non-volatile memory (NVM) and processing-in-memory (PIM) open up new opportunities not only for database processing. Together with cloud technologies, new interconnects, and paradigms such as disaggregated memory the traditional memory hierarchy of computing systems evolves towards a memory zoo.
In this lecture, we discuss the implications of this development on data-intensive systems from a database perspective. We survey recent technologies, discuss the challenges of leveraging these technologies in database systems, and present suitable approaches, particularly for NVM, PIM as well as ideas on how to cope with different memory and storage devices in one system.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Kai-Uwe Sattler (TU Ilmenau)
