@Article{kallahalla:pc-opt, author = {M. Kallahalla and P.~J. Varman}, title = {{PC-OPT}: Optimal Offline Prefetching and Caching for Parallel {I/O} Systems}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Computers}, year = {2002}, month = {November}, volume = {51}, number = {11}, pages = {1333--1344}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society Press}, URL = {http://www.computer.org/tc/tc2002/tytoc.htm}, keywords = {parallel I/O, file prefetching, pario-bib}, abstract = {We address the problem of prefetching and caching in a parallel I/O system and present a new algorithm for parallel disk scheduling. Traditional buffer management algorithms that minimize the number of block misses are substantially suboptimal in a parallel I/O system where multiple I/Os can proceed simultaneously. We show that in the offline case, where a priori knowledge of all the requests is available, PC-OPT performs the minimum number of I/Os to service the given I/O requests. This is the first parallel I/O scheduling algorithm that is provably offline optimal in the parallel disk model. In the online case, we study the context of global L-block lookahead, which gives the buffer management algorithm a lookahead consisting of L distinct requests. We show that the competitive ratio of PC-OPT, with global L-block lookahead, is \Theta (M - L + D), when L < M, and \Theta (M D / L), when L > M, where the number of disks is D and buffer size is M.} }