1. A system comprising: a nonvolatile memory; a volatile memory; a processor coupled to the nonvolatile memory and the volatile memory; and a memory management component having an application programming interface (API) that includes a nonvolatile memory allocation routine configured to allocate a portion of the nonvolatile memory as persistent storage across instantiations of an application in accordance with a persistence qualifier that is provided to the nonvolatile memory allocation routine; wherein the persistence qualifier is indicative of a type of persistence desired by the application.