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USENIX Annual Technical Conference (NO 98), 1998
Abstract
Cheating the I/O Bottleneck: Network Storage with Trapeze/Myrinet
Darrell C. Anderson, Jeffrey S. Chase, Syam Gadde, Andrew J. Gallatin, and Kenneth G. Yocum, Duke University;
Michael J. Feeley, University of British Columbia
Abstract
Recent advances in I/O bus structures (e.g., PCI), high-speed
networks, and fast, cheap disks have significantly expanded the I/O
capacity of desktop-class systems. This paper describes a messaging
system designed to deliver the potential of these advances for network
storage systems including cluster file systems and network memory. We
describe gms_net, an RPC-like kernel-kernel messaging system
based on Trapeze, a new firmware program for Myrinet network
interfaces. We show how the communication features of Trapeze and
gms_net are used by the Global Memory Service (GMS), a
kernel-based network memory system.
The paper focuses on support for zero-copy page migration in
GMS/Trapeze using two RPC variants important for peer-peer distributed
services: (1) delegated RPC in which a request is delegated to a
third party, and (2) nonblocking RPC in which replies are
processed from the Trapeze receive interrupt handler. We present
measurements of sequential file access from network memory in the
GMS/Trapeze prototype on a Myrinet/Alpha cluster, showing the
bandwidth effects of file system interfaces and communication choices.
GMS/Trapeze delivers a peak read bandwidth of 96 MB/s using
memory-mapped file I/O.
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