Layered memory architecture for high IO intensive information services to achieve timeliness

Storage systems need to provide high I0 transactions in addition to their capacity and availability requirements to achieve high assurance characteristics, such as fault tolerance and timeliness. Caches built in large and medium size storage systems have not been very effective to improve the I0 transactions and overall performance of the system. Caches at various layers of the memory hierarchy in computing systems are more fast but very small compared to the adjacent lower level of storage device. This paper proposes a novel concept to exploit local memory as a block device to improve the I0 performance of storage systems called Data Transmission System (DTS) concept. This concept is based on hierarchical layered memory utilization and management in the information system. Data accessed frequently is maintained on the managed DTS cache device in close proximity to the CPU. The proposed concept is substantially different from the conventional unmanaged cache in the computing systems. System architecture and detailed system design are presented in this paper to realize the proposed concept. Performance evaluation of the system has been carried out through numerical as well as application scenario. The experimental results show improvement of the order of 10 to 100 times faster I0 transactions and reduce CPU wait time significantly.