Memory Efficient refers to the ability of a program or system to utilize memory resources effectively while minimizing unnecessary consumption. A memory-efficient program optimally manages its memory usage, avoiding unnecessary allocations and releases resources promptly when they are no longer needed. This is particularly important in environments with limited memory, such as mobile devices or embedded systems, where efficient memory usage contributes to better performance and responsiveness.

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Austere Flash Caching with Deduplication and Compression

Modern storage systems leverage flash caching to boost I/O performance, and enhancing the space efficiency and endurance of flash caching remains a critical yet challenging issue in the face of ever-growing data-intensive workloads. Deduplication and compression are promising data reduction techniques for storage and I/O savings via the removal of duplicate content, yet they also incur substantial memory overhead for index management. We propose AustereCache, a new flash caching design that aims for memory-efficient indexing, while preserving the data reduction benefits of deduplication and compression. AustereCache emphasizes austere cache management and proposes different core techniques for efficient data organization and cache replacement, so as to eliminate as much indexing metadata as possible and make lightweight in-memory index structures viable. Trace-driven experiments show that our AustereCache prototype saves 69.9-97.0% of memory usage compared to the state-of-the-art flash caching design that supports deduplication and compression, while maintaining comparable read hit ratios and write reduction ratios and achieving high I/O throughput.