Non-volatile memory and Java: 1. Introducing NVM

Non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) has arrived into the computing mainstream. This development is likely to be highly disruptive: it will change the economics of the memory hierarchy by providing a new, intermediate level between DRAM and flash, but fully exploiting the new technology will require widespread changes in how we architect and write software. Despite this, there is surprisingly little awareness on the part of programmers (and their management) of the technology and its likely impact, and relatively little activity in academia (compared to the magnitude of the paradigm shift) in developing techniques and tools which programmers will need to respond to the change. In this series I will discuss the possible impact of NVRAM on the Java ecosystem. Java is the most widely used programming language: there are millions of Java developers and billions of lines of Java code in daily use.