KR20200121533A - Memory management unit based on characteristics of heterogeneous memories and operating method thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

According to the present invention, an operation method of a memory management device that manages at least two different types of memories can comprise the following steps of: receiving a memory allocation request from an application program in a memory allocation/release module; analyzing the characteristics of the application program by using additional information related to the characteristics of the application program in the memory allocation/release module; determining a priority for each memory existing in a system according to the analyzed characteristics; and allocating a memory corresponding to the memory allocation request by using the determined priority. According to the present invention, an inefficient memory operation that may occur when driving an existing software in a computing system equipped with a heterogeneous memory with various characteristics can be prevented.

Description

A memory management device based on the characteristics of heterogeneous memories and its operation method {MEMORY MANAGEMENT UNIT BASED ON CHARACTERISTICS OF HETEROGENEOUS MEMORIES AND OPERATING METHOD THEREOF}

The present invention relates to a memory management device based on the characteristics of heterogeneous memories and a method of operating the same.

With the advancement of memory technology, not only main memory based on existing DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) but also various types of memory technologies have already been commercialized or are about to be commercialized. Representatively, there are Phase Change Memory (PRAM) and Spin Transfer Torque-Magnetoresistive RAM (STT-MRAM), and Intel's 3D Xpoint family is based on phase change memory technology. have. A common characteristic of such next-generation memory technology is non-volatility, which refers to a characteristic in which data is preserved as it is, unlike DRAM, in which data is destroyed when the power is turned off. However, although various memory technologies have similarities, each technology has different characteristics. Above all, the most important performance, especially access latency, differs by technology for each memory technology, and even if the same technology is used, it may be significantly different depending on design issues at the commercialization stage. In addition, the degree of integration, energy consumption according to read/write operations, and retention time of data are also various characteristics by memory technology and engineering issue. Therefore, it is expected that in the future computing systems will be equipped with various types of memories in order to make the most of these memory-specific characteristics.

Registered Patent: 10-1618634, Registration Date: April 29, 2016, Title: Nonvolatile memory, its page operation allocation device and page mapping device, its page dynamic allocation method and page mapping method. Publication: 10-2016-0008885, Publication date: January 25, 2016, Title: Electronic device and memory management method of an electronic device. Publication: 10-2017-0070920, Publication date: June 23, 2017, Title: Nonvolatile memory module, computing system including the same, and operation method thereof.

An object of the present invention is to select and allocate an efficiently operable memory based on the properties of a user application program analyzed statically or dynamically according to the characteristics of various types of memories operated in the system, and adaptively according to the execution situation. It is to provide a memory management device and a method of operation thereof so that effective optimization such as performance, memory capacity, and energy usage is possible by enabling operation and management.

An operating method of a memory management device for managing at least two different types of memories according to an embodiment of the present invention includes: receiving a memory allocation request from an application program in a memory allocation/release module; Analyzing the characteristics of the application program by using the additional information related to the characteristics of the application program in the memory allocation/release module; Determining a priority for each memory existing in the system according to the analyzed characteristics; And allocating a memory corresponding to the memory allocation request by using the determined priority.

The memory management apparatus and its operating method according to an embodiment of the present invention can prevent inefficient memory operation that may occur when running existing software in a computing system equipped with heterogeneous memories having various characteristics.

In addition, the memory management apparatus and its operating method according to an embodiment of the present invention may determine and allocate an optimal memory based on program characteristic information extracted from a user or a compiler.

In addition, the memory management device and its operation method according to an embodiment of the present invention dynamically determine if the program characteristic information considered during initial allocation and the program characteristic dynamically generated during actual operation differ, and thus a memory suitable for the new characteristic It supports migration to and from user-level virtual addresses, even if physical addresses are changed.

The accompanying drawings are provided to aid understanding of the present embodiment, and provide the embodiments together with a detailed description. However, the technical features of the present embodiment are not limited to a specific drawing, and features disclosed in each drawing may be combined with each other to constitute a new embodiment.
1 is a diagram illustrating a general computing system as an example.
2 is a diagram illustrating a memory management apparatus 100 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
3 is a flowchart illustrating a memory allocation method of the memory allocation/release module 110 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a method of storing and transmitting additional information necessary when analyzing characteristics of a user application program in the memory allocation/release module 110 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
5 is a flowchart illustrating a memory migration method of the memory management module 120 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
6 is a flowchart illustrating a memory reallocation method performed by the memory allocation/release module 110 when memory migration is required according to an embodiment of the present invention.
7 is a diagram illustrating an example interaction between a memory allocation/release module 1110, a memory management module 1120, an operating system 1000, and the hardware 2000 according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In the following, the contents of the present invention will be described clearly and in detail to the extent that a person of ordinary skill in the technical field of the present invention can easily implement it using the drawings.

Since the present invention can apply various changes and have various forms, specific embodiments will be illustrated in the drawings and described in detail in the text. However, this is not intended to limit the present invention to a specific form of disclosure, it is to be understood as including all changes, equivalents, or substitutes included in the spirit and scope of the present invention. Terms such as first and second may be used to describe various elements, but the elements should not be limited by the terms.

The terms may be used for the purpose of distinguishing one component from another component. For example, without departing from the scope of the present invention, a first component may be referred to as a second component, and similarly, a second component may be referred to as a first component. When a component is referred to as being "connected" or "connected" to another component, it is understood that it is directly connected to or may be connected to the other component, but other components may exist in the middle. Should be. On the other hand, when a component is referred to as being "directly connected" or "directly connected" to another component, it should be understood that there is no other component in the middle.

Other expressions describing the relationship between components, such as "between" and "just between" or "adjacent to" and "directly adjacent to" should be interpreted as well. The terms used in the present application are used only to describe specific embodiments, and are not intended to limit the present invention. Singular expressions include plural expressions unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.

In the present application, terms such as "comprise" or "have" are intended to designate the existence of implemented features, numbers, steps, actions, components, parts, or combinations thereof, and one or more other features or numbers It is to be understood that the possibility of addition or presence of, steps, actions, components, parts, or combinations thereof is not preliminarily excluded. Unless otherwise defined, all terms used herein, including technical or scientific terms, have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which the present invention belongs. Terms as defined in a commonly used dictionary should be interpreted as having a meaning consistent with the meaning of the context of the related technology, and should not be interpreted as an ideal or excessively formal meaning unless explicitly defined in this application. .

In general, when running a user application program in a system equipped with various types of memory, it is necessary to select, allocate, and manage a memory suitable for the characteristics of the application program. The memory management device and its operation method according to an embodiment of the present invention are efficient based on properties of user application programs that are statically or dynamically analyzed according to the characteristics of various types of memories (volatile or nonvolatile) operated in the system. By selecting and allocating memory that can be operated as a memory and adaptively operating and managing it according to the execution situation, effective optimization such as performance, memory capacity, and energy usage can be expected.

1 is a diagram illustrating a general computing system as an example. Referring to FIG. 1, a structure for each layer of a general computing system is shown. One or more processors are connected to various types of memory. Various types of memory are each mapped to the system's physical address area. All processors can access their respective memory through this physical address. A memory management device included in the operating system software manages various types of memories. When the user application program requests memory required for execution from the memory management device of the operating system, the memory management device allocates a portion of the memory to be managed by the requested size and delivers it to the requested application program.

In this case, if the memory management device of the operating system does not recognize the characteristics of various memories installed in the system, a memory that is not suitable for the application program may be allocated even though another memory optimized for the properties of the requested application program exists. In this case, the application program is allocated and used memory that does not match its characteristics, which may lead to inefficient operation such as execution time and energy consumption. Therefore, there is a need for a memory management software technology capable of efficiently allocating and operating by accurately recognizing the characteristics of various memories, and a technology capable of extracting characteristic information of an application program and delivering it to the memory management software.

2 is a diagram illustrating a memory management apparatus 100 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 2, the memory management apparatus 100 may include a memory allocation/release module 110 and a memory management module 120.

The memory allocation/release module 100 may perform a function of selecting an optimal memory, allocating and releasing memory in consideration of various characteristics of memory and characteristics of an application program that requested the memory.

The memory management module 120 may perform migration of the allocated memory to another memory when necessary based on a dynamic situation of the system.

Meanwhile, the memory management apparatus 100 may further include a paging-based virtual memory management function that is basically provided by an existing operating system.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a memory allocation method of the memory allocation/release module 110 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 3, the memory allocation operation of the memory allocation/release module 110 may be performed as follows.

When a memory allocation request occurs in the user application program, the memory allocation/release module 110 may analyze the characteristics of the user application program (S110). At this time, additional information related to characteristics is required from the application program. Thereafter, the memory allocation/release module 110 may determine a priority for each memory existing in the current system according to an optimized degree based on the characteristics of the user application program (S120).

The memory allocation/release module 110 may determine whether the memory of the highest priority (Prio1) can be allocated as much as the requested size (S130) (S140). If memory allocation is possible, the memory allocation/release module 110 may allocate and transfer the memory to the user and then terminate the memory allocation (S150). On the other hand, if memory allocation is not possible, it may be determined whether the priority is the lowest priority (PrioN) (S160). If allocation fails even in memory of the lowest priority (PrioN), the task may be terminated due to memory allocation failure. On the other hand, if the priority is not the lowest priority (PrioN), step S140 may be entered after reducing the priority.

Meanwhile, the memory release algorithm may first check whether a memory address requested for release is a valid region, and then terminate after releasing a memory region corresponding to the address.

Depending on the embodiment, some or all of the steps and/or actions drive instructions, programs, interactive data structures, clients and/or servers stored in one or more non-transitory computer-readable media. At least some of them may be implemented or performed using one or more processors. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media may be illustratively software, firmware, hardware, and/or any combination thereof. Also, the functions of the "module" discussed in this specification may be implemented in software, firmware, hardware, and/or any combination thereof.

One or more non-transitory computer-readable media and/or means for implementing/performing one or more operations/steps/modules of the embodiments of the present invention include application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), standard integrated circuits, Controllers that perform appropriate instructions, including microcontrollers, and/or embedded controllers, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), and the like, but are not limited thereto. Does not.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a method of storing and transmitting additional information necessary when analyzing characteristics of a user application program in the memory allocation/release module 110 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 4, when the application program characteristic additional information is generated, the compiler can automatically determine the characteristic through static analysis of the source code.

In an embodiment, if the user already knows the characteristics of the program, a hint is directly given to the compiler, and additional characteristic information may be generated accordingly. The additional information generated in this way may be stored in a predetermined area of the program binary image.

In an embodiment, the memory allocation/management module 110 of the memory management device 100 may read additional information stored in a binary image of a corresponding program when a memory allocation request occurs, and utilize the read additional information when analyzing characteristics of an application program. have. In another embodiment, the memory allocation/management module 110 may not use information stored in a binary image, but may directly transfer the information in the form of a call factor when a user program requests a memory.

5 is a flowchart illustrating a memory migration method of the memory management module 120 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 5, the memory migration operation of the memory management module 120 may proceed as follows.

In general, memory migration is necessary because if memory is allocated based on information analyzed before program execution, memory more suitable for the current situation may be changed according to the dynamic execution situation.

The memory management module 120 first analyzes the dynamic execution characteristics of each program, and can utilize information such as performance-related counters provided by hardware such as an operating system (eg, perf_events in Linux) or a processor (eg, Intel Performance Counter). There is (S210).

The memory management module 120 may determine whether the new dynamic execution characteristic does not match the currently allocated memory characteristic (S220).

If the dynamic execution characteristics and the allocated memory characteristics match, the memory migration operation may be terminated as it is. On the other hand, if the dynamic execution characteristic and the allocated memory characteristic do not match, the memory management module 120 may re-determine the priority for each memory based on the new characteristic (S230). Here, New_Prio is the highest priority for new characteristics, and Old_Prio is the priority of the previously allocated memory. The memories included in the migration consideration target may be limited to memories between two priorities.

Thereafter, the memory management module 120 may request a newly allocable memory from the memory allocation/release module 110 (S240).

Thereafter, the memory management module 120 may determine whether memory migration is possible (S250). If memory migration is possible, the memory management module 120 may update the page table using the physical address received from the memory allocation/release module 110 (S260). The reason for updating the page table is that a new mapping operation is required so that the virtual address of the user can be used as it is even if the physical address of the newly allocated memory is changed. On the other hand, if memory migration is impossible, the memory migration operation may be terminated as it is.

6 is a flowchart illustrating a memory reallocation method performed by the memory allocation/release module 110 when memory migration is required according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 6, the memory reallocation operation of the memory allocation/release module 110 may be performed as follows.

When a migration request is received from the memory management module 120, the memory allocation/release module 110 may set the priority to the highest priority (New_Prio) (S310), and determine whether there is an allocable memory ( S320). If, when there is an allocable memory corresponding to the priority, the memory allocation/release module 110 may transfer the physical address of the corresponding memory to the memory management module 120 (S330), and then the memory migration operation is performed. It can be terminated.

On the other hand, when there is no allocatable memory corresponding to the priority, it may be determined whether the priority is the lowest priority (Old_Prio) (S340). If the priority is Old_Prio, the memory allocation/release module 110 may notify the memory management module 110 of the memory migration impossibility, and then terminate the memory migration operation. On the other hand, if the priority is not Old_Prio, the priority is decreased and then the step S320 is entered (S350).

7 is a diagram illustrating an example interaction between a memory allocation/release module 1110, a memory management module 1120, an operating system 1000, and the hardware 2000 according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In an embodiment, the memory management module 1120 may request the memory allocation/release module 1110 when memory migration is required.

In an embodiment, the memory allocation/release module 1110 may transmit a corresponding address to the memory management module 1120 when migrating memory is allocated.

In addition, in an embodiment, the memory management module 1120 from the performance monitoring software module 1200 of the operating system 1000 or the performance monitoring hardware module 2200 of the hardware 2000 to analyze the dynamic characteristics of the user application program. You can receive the necessary information. For example, the memory management module 1100 collects and analyzes the number of read/write times of the memory of the corresponding program from the operating system 1000 or the hardware 2000, and converts the memory to a memory better suited to the current memory access characteristics. You can consider moving.

The memory management device based on the characteristics of heterogeneous memories according to an embodiment of the present invention and its operation method can prevent inefficient memory operation that may occur when running existing software in a computing system equipped with heterogeneous memories having various characteristics. .

In addition, the memory management device based on the characteristics of heterogeneous memories according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention and a method of operating the same may determine and allocate an optimal memory based on program characteristic information extracted from a user or a compiler.

In addition, the memory management device and its operation method based on the characteristics of heterogeneous memories according to an embodiment of the present invention dynamically determine when the program characteristic information considered during initial allocation and the program characteristic dynamically generated during actual operation are different. It supports migration to memory that meets new characteristics, and can be used as it is without changing user-level virtual addresses even if physical addresses are changed.

On the other hand, the contents of the present invention described above are only specific examples for carrying out the invention. The present invention will include not only specific and practically usable means itself, but also technical ideas that are abstract and conceptual ideas that can be utilized as future technologies.

100, 1100: memory management device
110, 1110: memory allocation/release module
120, 1120: memory management module
1000: operating system
2000: hardware
1200: performance monitoring software module
2200: performance monitoring hardware module

Claims (1)

In the method of operating a memory management device for managing at least two different types of memories,
Receiving a memory allocation request from an application program in a memory allocation/release module;
Analyzing the characteristics of the application program using additional information related to the characteristics of the application program in the memory allocation/release module;
Determining a priority for each memory existing in the system according to the analyzed characteristics; And
Allocating a memory corresponding to the memory allocation request by using the determined priority.

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