Digital Design & Comp. Arch. - Lecture 26: Virtual Memory (Spring 2022)

Why It Matters

Virtual memory underpins correctness and isolation in modern systems but can impose significant latency, bandwidth, and coherence costs that limit performance and scalability; understanding its trade-offs is essential for system and architecture design. Improvements or replacements to VM could materially affect OS behavior, cloud efficiency, and processor-memory co-design.

Summary

Professor introduces virtual memory as a core OS–architecture interface, tracing its roots to 1960s ideas and contrasting its relatively little evolution with the rapid advances in prefetching. The lecture previews key VM concepts, implementation complexity, and performance overheads, and highlights interactions with caching, multiprocessor coherence, and memory bandwidth. The instructor also references readings and recent critiques proposing fixes, while warning that many existing VM designs struggle on modern workloads. Overall, the session aims to give an overview of virtual memory’s mechanics, trade-offs, and current research directions.

Original Description

Digital Design and Computer Architecture, ETH Zürich, Spring 2022 (https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2022/)

Lecture 26: Virtual Memory

Lecturer: Professor Onur Mutlu (https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/)

Date: June 3, 2022

Lecture 26 Slides (pptx): https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2022/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=onur-digitaldesign_comparch-2022-lecture26-virtual-memory-afterlecture.pptx

Lecture 26 Slides (pdf): https://safari.ethz.ch/digitaltechnik/spring2022/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=onur-digitaldesign_comparch-2022-lecture26-virtual-memory-afterlecture.pdf

Recommended Reading:

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A Modern Primer on Processing in Memory

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.03112

Intelligent Architectures for Intelligent Computing Systems

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.12381

RowHammer: A Retrospective

https://people.inf.ethz.ch/omutlu/pub/RowHammer-Retrospective_ieee_tcad19.pdf

Fundamentally Understanding and Solving RowHammer

https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.07613

RECOMMENDED LECTURE VIDEOS & PLAYLISTS:

========================================

Computer Architecture Fall 2021 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yfkM_5EFgo&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi-Mnk1PxjEIG32HAGILkTOF

Digital Design and Computer Architecture Spring 2021 Livestream Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbC0EZY8yw4&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi_uej3aY39YB5pfW4SJ7LlN

Featured Lectures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVYCchBGNVc&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8VrmOTz44l2WupethSdh-M&index=1

Interview with Professor Onur Mutlu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ffSEKZhmvo&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8VrmOTz44l2WupethSdh-M&index=9

The Story of RowHammer Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgd7PHQQ1AI&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=39

Accelerating Genome Analysis Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7sn41lH-4A&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=41

Memory-Centric Computing Systems Tutorial at IEDM 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3sEaINPBOE&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=35

Intelligent Architectures for Intelligent Machines Lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTieZPY4Wmc&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=38

Computer Architecture Fall 2020 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3mPdZA-Fmc&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi9xidyIgBxUz7xRPS-wisBN

Digital Design and Computer Architecture Spring 2020 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJBmIaUneB0&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi_FRrloMa2fUYWPGiZUBQo2

Public Lectures by Onur Mutlu, Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgiZlSOcGFM&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl

Computer Architecture at Carnegie Mellon Spring 2015 Lectures Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLP_X4wyHbY&list=PL5PHm2jkkXmi5CxxI7b3JCL1TWybTDtKq

Rethinking Memory System Design Lecture @stanfordonline :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7xZLNMIY1E&list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi8D_5MGV6EnXEJHnV2YFBJl&index=4