Compiler-Assisted Crash Consistency for PMEM

Abstract

Writing crash-consistent programs for memory-semantic storage such as persistent memory (PMEM) is error-prone and cumbersome. Programmers must implement both the main logic and the recovery logic to ensure data consistency after unexpected power failures. Prior work has reduced this burden using compiler-assisted logging techniques to enforce crash consistency. However, these techniques often apply persistence uniformly, limiting support for diverse programming models and incurring high logging overhead.

We present SSAPP (Statically and Systematically Automated Persistence is Possible), a compiler extension that transparently adds crash consistency to the main logic and automatically generates tailored recovery code. SSAPP persists transient state with low overhead during main logic execution and makes principled resumption decisions during post-failure recovery. Based on these decisions, the generated recovery code correctly completes the interrupted operation. This design supports a broader range of programming models — including lock-free data structures — while reducing crash consistency overhead.

We evaluate SSAPP on transactional benchmarks, lock-based, and lock-free data structures. With minimal developer effort, SSAPP converts volatile lock-free data structures into crash-consistent ones, achieving performance comparable to Mirror, a hand-optimized persistent data structure library. SSAPP also outperforms Clobber-NVM, a prior compiler-based PMEM system, achieving 1.8× higher throughput.