Extending DONUTS: A Comparative Evaluation of Cache Replacement Policies for Efficient Crash Consistency in Non-Volatile Memory

Abstract

Non-volatile memory (NVM) has emerged as a promising technology to replace or complement DRAM in computer systems. However, ensuring crash consistency is a critical challenge in NVM-based systems, as partial updates to data structures can leave the system in an inconsistent state upon failure. This work extends DONUTS, a software-transparent checkpointing mechanism, by integrating additional cache replacement policies beyond the original LRU-Read strategy. Evaluations using SPEC CPU2006 and Splash2 benchmarks demonstrate that alternative cache replacement policies maintain a runtime overhead of approximately 2\%, while offering superior efficiency for certain workloads.