SoftPCM: Enhancing Energy Efficiency and Lifetime of Phase Change Memory in Video Applications via Approximate Write

Modern video applications such as video codecs are memory-intensive. As an emerging non-volatile memory technology, phase change memory (PCM) will benefit video applications due to its high density, low leakage power and superior scalability. However, PCM consumes high write energy and can only sustain a limited write number. Hence it is necessary to reduce the write number of PCM for video applications. In this paper, we propose SoftPCM to enhance both energy efficiency and lifetime of PCM. SoftPCM utilizes the error tolerance characteristic of video applications to relax the accuracy of write operations. Experimental results show that SoftPCM can reduce 22% writes and thus improve energy efficiency and lifetime of PCM with slight video quality degradation.