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Virginia Tech

Prototyping Hardware-compressed Memory for Multi-tenant Systems

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Software memory compression has been a common practice among operating systems. Since then, prior works have explored hardware memory compression to reduce the load on the CPU by offloading memory compression to hardware. However, prior works on hardware memory compression cannot provide critical isolation in multi-tenant systems like cloud servers. Our evaluation of prior work (TMCC) shows that a tenant can be slowed down by more than 12x due to the lack of isolation. This work, Compressed Memory Management Unit (CMMU), prototypes hardware compression for multi-tenant systems. CMMU provides critical isolation for multi-tenant systems.First, CMMU allows OS to control individual tenants' usage of physical memory. Second, CMMU compresses a tenant's memory to an OS-specified physical usage target. Finally, CMMU notifies the OS to start swapping the memory to the storage if it fails to compress the memory to the target. We prototype CMMU with a real compression module on an FPGA board. CMMU runs with a Linux kernel modified to support CMMU. The prototype virtually expands the memory capacity to 4X. CMMU stably supports the modified Linux kernel with multiple tenants and applications. While achieving this, CMMU only requires several extra cycles of overhead besides the essential data structure accesses. ASIC synthesis results show CMMU fits within 0.00931mm2 of silicon and operates at 3GHz while consuming 36.90mW of power. It is a negligible cost to modern server systems.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Computer Science and Applications
Department dc:contributor.department
Computer Science and Applications
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2023

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Liu, Yuqing
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Jian, Xun
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Min, Chang Woo
  • Hicks, Matthew

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:36651
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/116523

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Liu, Yuqing. Prototyping Hardware-compressed Memory for Multi-tenant Systems. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2023. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/116523