Towards an Alternative Memory Architecture

Explore an alternative memory architecture in this 29-minute conference talk by Joao Martins from Oracle. Delve into the direct map, security vulnerabilities, and potential improvements for hypervisors. Learn about dev/mem and mem=NNN, the Device DAX Interface, and its implementation without struct page. Discover example usage scenarios and use cases for pageless/secret memory in KVM. Examine the advantages of this approach, and understand the relationship between ASI, Pageless Memory, Huge Pages, and reduced struct pages.

Intro
The direct map
Security vulnerabilities
Can we do better for hypervisors?
dev/mem and mem=NNN
The Device DAX Interface
Device DAX without struct page
Example usage
Use cases for pageless/secret memory in KVM
Advantages
ASI and Pageless Memory
Huge Pages and less struct pages