Input/output behavior of supercomputing applications

: This paper describes the collection and analysis of supercomputer I/O traces and their use in a collection of buffering and caching simulations. This serves two purposes. First, it gives a model of how individual applications running on supercomputers request file system I/O, allowing system designers to optimize I/O hardware and file system algorithms to that model. Second, the buffering simulations show what resources are needed to maximize the CPU utilization of a supercomputer given a very bursty I/O request rate. By using read-ahead and write-behind in a large solid-state disk, one or two applications were sufficient to fully utilize a Cray Y-MP CPU.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1991
• Where: SC
• Authors: Ethan L. Miller, Randy H. Katz
• Keywords: Applied Computing, File System I/o, I/O Request Rate, SC 1991, Supercomputer I/o Traces