> On the same day we are talking about WASM microkernels in another thread
That would be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17187384
> but the most commonly used would basically be allocating a chunk of memory and assigning it a file name so you could re-open it next time.
So the PC platform finally caught up with Amiga's RAM disk ;-)
I think you meant RAD: disk... RAM disks don't survive a warm boot, but RAD did (IIRC). But, even RAD: didn't survive a cold boot (where this Optane memory does)
Still, I do fondly remember my Amiga days!
These are byte addressable - they will look like RAM to the OS. (If you have a motherboard that supports them, there is a slight change to the spec).
To the application developer, the interface will be http://pmem.io/pmdk/ . Last I looked, there were several ways to do things, but the most commonly used would basically be allocating a chunk of memory and assigning it a file name so you could re-open it next time.
This is exciting because it could open up exciting possibilities like zero-CPU IO with DMA straight to persistent memory, "sleep" mode that is essentially free, re-thinking paging in modern operating systems, and generally re-thinking everything we've assumed since core memory.
On the same day we are talking about WASM microkernels in another thread. Things are getting fun again :)