Storage becomes first class memory

Computer architectures have always addressed memory and storage differently. The memory subsystem is an integral part of any processor design, while storage was placed on the I/O subsystem and accessed via several software layers. Emerging storage systems however, are challenging this fundamental and decades-old assumption. First class memory is an entity that supports all the operations generally available to main memory. This article describes how storage is becoming a first class memory. We explore the benefits of novel hardware and software technologies, demonstrating a speedup of ×280 at the storage layer - over modern Flash and file systems, which translated to a speedup of ×3.8 at the application layer, when measured SQL transactions on the PostgreSQL database. We then show that traditional data access tradeoffs become irrelevant and, as a result, application programming is significantly simplified.