Practical prefetching techniques for parallel file systems

Improvements in the processing speed of multiprocessors are outpacing improvements in the speed of disk hardware. Parallel disk I/O subsystems have been proposed as one way to close the gap between processor and disk speeds. In a previous paper the authors showed that prefetching and caching have the potential to deliver the performance benefits of parallel file systems to parallel applications. They describe experiments with practical prefetching policies, and show that prefetching can be implemented efficiently even for the more complex parallel file access patterns. They also test the ability of these policies across a range of architectural parameters. (see IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol.1, no.2, p.218-30, 1990)