A survey on Persistent Memory indexes: Recent advances, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The Non-volatile Memory (NVM) technology belongs to a novel class of storage devices that offer byte-addressability like DRAM and durability as in persistent storage. The NVM is known as Storage Class Memory (SCM), Non-volatile RAM (NVRAM), or Persistent Memory (PM). PM technology opened new avenues of research in data systems. Indexing and access techniques are important for efficient database systems management. The indexes that are developed to utilize PM are called PM-aware indexes or Persistent Memory indexes. With the availability of commercial products, such as Optane DCPMM, many recent projects have utilized the new PM technology. Several persistent indexes have been developed, and the research is still ongoing. In this paper, we present an overview of PM technology, its appealing characteristics, the challenges it imposes, and its applications in designing state-of-the-art database indexing structures. We present a broad survey of the state-of-the-art PM indexes and present a taxonomy based on their architecture. We aim to provide researchers working on persistent indexes, an overview of the work that has been done to date, and future research directions.