Automatic Compiler-Inserted I/O Prefetching for Out-of-Core Applications

Current operating systems offer poor performance when a numeric application's working set does not fit in main memory. As a result, programmers who wish to solve "out-of-core" problems efficiently are typically faced with the onerous task of rewriting an application to use explicit I/O operations (e.g., read/write). In this paper, we propose and evaluate a fully-automatic technique which liberates the programmer from this task, provides high performance, and requires only minimal changes to current operating systems. In our scheme, the compiler provides the crucial information on future access patterns without burdening the programmer, the operating system supports non-binding prefetch and release hints for managing I/O, and the operating system cooperates with a run-time layer to accelerate performance by adapting to dynamic behavior and minimizing prefetch overhead. This approach maine abstraction of unlimited virtual memory for the programmer, gives the compiler the ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: OSDI
• Authors: Todd C. Mowry, Angela K. Demke, Orran Krieger
• Keywords: Current Operating Systems, Explicit I/o Operations, Operating System, Operating Systems, OSDI 1996