The more rapid rate of increase in the speed of microprocessor technology than in memory speeds has created a serious 'memory gap' for computer designers and manufacturers. "High Performance Memory Systems" addresses this issue and examines all aspects of improving the memory system performance of general-purpose programs. Current research highlights from both industry and academia focus on: coherence, synchronization, and allocation; power-awareness, reliability, and reconfigurability; software-based memory tuning; architecture design issues; and workload considerations. Topics and features: *both harware and software approaches to scalability and speed disparities are considered *introductory chapter provides broad examination of high performance memory systems *includes coverage of topics from several important international conferences Edited by leading international authorities in the field, this new work provides a survey from researchers and practitioners on advances in technology, architecture, and algorithms that address scalability needs in multiprocessors and the expanding gap between CPU/network and memory speeds. It is ideally suited to researchers and R & D professionals with interests or practice in computer engineering, computer architecture, and processor architecture.