DESIGN OF A SELF MANAGING SECONDARY MEMORY.

Abstract

The 'self-managing-secondary memory' (SMSM) is intended to serve at an intermediate level between primary memory and disks in the memory hierarchy. It supports name based associative searching for objects, to implement distributed and parallel name (directory) management. It also supports hardware memory allocation, garbage collection and compaction. It can store and retrieve variable size objects as readily as fixed size objects. The SMSM is modularly expandable in two senses: (1) multiple units can function as an integrated unit with respect to name management; and (2) (due to internal parallelism) the storage capacity of each cell can be expanded over a wide range without increase in latency or access times. The functionality of the SMSM can be extended to include database operations such as selection or projection if desired.