A File Is Not a File: Understanding the I/O Behavior of Apple Desktop Applications

We analyze the I/O behavior of iBench, a new collection of productivity and multimedia application workloads. Our analysis reveals a number of differences between iBench and typical file-system workload studies, including the complex organization of modern files, the lack of pure sequential access, the influence of underlying frameworks on I/O patterns, the widespread use of file synchronization and atomic operations, and the prevalence of threads. Our results have strong ramifications for the design of next generation local and cloud-based storage systems.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: TOCS
• Authors: Tyler Harter, Chris Dragga, Michael Vaughn, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau
• Keywords: Complex Organization, Multimedia Application, Programming Languages, System Workload, TOCS 2012