IOStone: Developing a Comprehensive Measure of I/O Performance

Investigator(s):

Arvin Park (PI)

Sponsor:

University of California-Davis, CA 95616 5307522075

Start Date/Expiration Date

1990-07-01 to 1992-12-31 (amended 1993-08-03)

Awarded Amount to Date:

$60,000

Abstract: I/O system performance has become and will remain an important research focus as processor speeds continue to improve faster than I/O system speeds. Because there presently exists no accurate way to measure I/O system performance, it is hard to objectively evaluate new I/O system designs. A measure for I/O performance that simulates measured system workloads is being developed. The few studies of I/O system workloads to date have failed to consider: (i) mixtures of both file system activity and paging activity, (ii) CPU overhead of I/O system calls, (iii) variations of I/O activity across different application domains (e.g. business vs. scientific applications), and (iv) interarrival timings of I/O requests. Detailed measurements of these factors in I/O system performance, will be made and used to construct a comprehensive measure of I/O system performance. This measure can be used to compare I/O system designs and to balance processor performance with I/O system performance. Preliminary measurements indicate that a good balance between processor and I/O performance is currently rarely achieved. Results for these studies will make it possible to analyze performance tradeoffs for new I/O system designs.

NSF Org:

CCF - Division of Computer and Communication Foundations

Award Number:

9011280

Award Instrument:

Standard Grant

Program Manager:

name not available
CCF Division of Computer and Communication Foundations
CSE Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering

NSF Program(s):

COMPUTER SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTER SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE

Field Application(s):

Computer Science & Engineering, Other nsf.applications NEC

Program Element Code(s):

4715
, 4715