Method to minimize hot/cold page detection overhead on running workloads

Abstract

Methods and apparatus to minimize hot/cold page detection overhead on running workloads. A page meta data structure is populated with meta data associated with memory pages in one or more far memory tier. In conjunction with one or more processes accessing memory pages to perform workloads, the page meta data structure is updated to reflect accesses to the memory pages. The page meta data is used to determine which pages are 'hot' pages and which pages are “cold” pages, wherein hot pages are memory pages with relatively higher access frequencies and cold pages are memory pages with relatively lower access frequencies. Variations on the approach including filtering meta data updates on pages in memory regions of interest and applying a filter(s) to trigger meta data updates based on (a) condition(s). A callback function may also be triggered to be executed synchronously with memory page accesses.