Lifetime Improvement of Non Volatile Memory Cache by Write Restriction

Non-volatile memory technologies are the future contenders for the design of caches in the memory hierarchy because of their appealing characteristics such as high density and low static power. But the limited write endurance with write variations governed by replacement policies and access patterns reduce the chance of non-volatile memory as a successor of Static RAM. The lifespan of non-volatile memory cells is shortened due to increase in write variations. Techniques to improve the lifetime of NVM cache has gained research interest in recent years. Hence, proposed work aims to reduce intra-set write variations through equitable write distribution over the cache set by defining write-restricted window. Experiments reveal that proposed work significantly reduced the intra-set write variation, improving the lifetime of non-volatile cache.