OFF2F: A New Object File Format for Virtual Memory Systems to Support Volatile/non-Volatile Memory-Mixed Environment

Abstract

Research on non-volatile memory has advanced in recent years. Non-volatile memory is not installed on practical computers; however, it will appear in the near future. This study proposes a new executable file format to enable a virtual memory system to support program execution on a volatile and non-volatile memory-mixed computer. To be more precise, this study proposes OFF2F: a new object file format consisting of 2 files, which leverages the characteristics of volatile and non-volatile memories. OFF2F focuses on access form when a program is loaded into memory at program execution. This paper presents evaluation results in terms of reduction of page fault processing time.Index Terms-Volatile memory, executable file format, virtual memory system, demand paging, page fault.