Abstract

We propose a new parallel, noncollective I/O strategy called Distant I/O that targets clustered computer systems in which disks are attached to compute nodes. Distant I/O allows one-sided access to remote secondary storage without installing server processes or daemons on remote compute nodes. We implemented this model using Active Messages and demonstrated its performance advantages over the PIOFS parallel filesystem for an I/O-intensive parallel application on the IBM SP. 1 Introduction Recent advances in low-latency, high-speed network technology coupled with inexpensive commodity processors have greatly improved cost-effectiveness of parallel computing. Disk technology also has been advancing rapidly especially with respect to the storage density, capacity and bandwidth. I/O, on the other hand, remains a major bottleneck in many parallel applications, such as climate modeling, computational chemistry, and computational fluid dynamics. We argue that more flexible communication pro...

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