Parallel IO Support for Meta-computing Applications: MPI_Connect IO Applied to PACX-MPI

Parallel IO (PIO) support for larger scale computing is becoming more important as application developers better understand its importance in reducing overall execution time by avoiding IO overheads. This situation has been made more critical as processor speed and overall system size has increased at a far greater rate than sequential IO performance. Systems such as MPI_Connect and PACX-MPI allow multiple MPPs to be interconnected, complicating IO issues further. MPI_Connect implemented Parallel IO support for distributed applications in the MPI_Conn_IO package by transferring complete sections of files to remote machines, supporting the case that all the applications and the file storage were completely distributed. This system had a number of performance drawbacks compared to the more common usage of metacomputing where some files and applications have an affinity to a home site and thus less data transfer is required. Here we present the new PACXMPI PIO system based initially on MP...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: PVM
• Authors: Graham E. Fagg, Edgar Gabriel, Michael M. Resch, Jack Dongarra
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, IO Overheads, Parallel IO, PVM 2001, Sequential Io Performance