1
© The Author(s) 2020
S. Scargall, Programming Persistent Memory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4932-1_1
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Persistent
Memory Programming
This book describes programming techniques for writing applications that use persistent
memory. It is written for experienced software developers, but we assume no previous
experience using persistent memory. We provide many code examples in a variety of
programming languages. Most programmers will understand these examples, even if
they have not previously used the specific language.
Note All code examples are available on a GitHub repository (https://
github.com/Apress/programming-persistent-memory), along with
instructions for building and running it.
Additional documentation for persistent memory, example programs, tutorials, and
details on the Persistent Memory Development Kit (PMDK), which is used heavily in this
book, can be found on http://pmem.io.
The persistent memory products on the market can be used in various ways, and
many of these ways are transparent to applications. For example, all persistent memory
products we encountered support the storage interfaces and standard file API’s just like
any solid-state disk (SSD). Accessing data on an SSD is simple and well-understood, so
we consider these use cases outside the scope of this book. Instead, we concentrate on
memory-style access, where applications manage byte-addressable data structures that
reside in persistent memory. Some use cases we describe are volatile, using the persistent
memory only for its capacity and ignoring the fact it is persistent. However, most of this
book is dedicated to the persistent use cases, where data structures placed in persistent
memory are expected to survive crashes and power failures, and the techniques
described in this book keep those data structures consistent across those events.
© The Author(s) 2020
S. Scargall, Programming Persistent Memory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4932-1_1
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Persistent
Memory Programming
This book describes programming techniques for writing applications that use persistent
memory. It is written for experienced software developers, but we assume no previous
experience using persistent memory. We provide many code examples in a variety of
programming languages. Most programmers will understand these examples, even if
they have not previously used the specific language.
Note All code examples are available on a GitHub repository (https://
github.com/Apress/programming-persistent-memory), along with
instructions for building and running it.
Additional documentation for persistent memory, example programs, tutorials, and
details on the Persistent Memory Development Kit (PMDK), which is used heavily in this
book, can be found on http://pmem.io.
The persistent memory products on the market can be used in various ways, and
many of these ways are transparent to applications. For example, all persistent memory
products we encountered support the storage interfaces and standard file API’s just like
any solid-state disk (SSD). Accessing data on an SSD is simple and well-understood, so
we consider these use cases outside the scope of this book. Instead, we concentrate on
memory-style access, where applications manage byte-addressable data structures that
reside in persistent memory. Some use cases we describe are volatile, using the persistent
memory only for its capacity and ignoring the fact it is persistent. However, most of this
book is dedicated to the persistent use cases, where data structures placed in persistent
memory are expected to survive crashes and power failures, and the techniques
described in this book keep those data structures consistent across those events.