Determining a write operation

Technologies are generally described herein for writing data to either volatile or nonvolatile memory. An estimated time for a last write operation to occur and an estimated time to a power down event are determined. A threshold time is generated from the estimated time for a last write operation to occur and the estimated time to a power down event. The threshold time represents time at which a cost to write to volatile memory may become greater than a cost to write to nonvolatile memory. The cost may be based at least in part on the need to copy data stored in a volatile memory to be persisted after a power down event from the volatile to the nonvolatile memory.