@InProceedings{park:interface,
  author = {Yoonho Park and Ridgway Scott and Stuart Sechrest},
  title = {Virtual Memory Versus File Interfaces for Large, Memory-intensive
  Scientific Applications},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of Supercomputing '96},
  year = {1996},
  month = {November},
  publisher = {ACM Press and IEEE Computer Society Press},
  note = {Also available as UH Department of Computer Science Research Report
  UH-CH-96-7},
  URL = {http://www.hpc.uh.edu/cenju/pub/vm_revisit.ps},
  keywords = {virtual memory, file interface, scientific applications,
  out-of-core, parallel I/O, pario-bib},
  abstract = {Scientific applications often require some strategy for temporary
  data storage to do the largest possible simulations. The use of virtual
  memory for temporary data storage has received criticism because of
  performance problems. However, modern virtual memory found in recent
  operating systems such as Cenju-3/DE give application writers control over
  virtual memory policies. We demonstrate that custom virtual memory policies
  can dramatically reduce virtual memory overhead and allow applications to run
  out-of-core efficiently. We also demonstrate that the main advantage of
  virtual memory, namely programming simplicity, is not lost.},
  comment = {Web and CDROM only. They advocate the use of traditional
  demand-paged virtual memory systems in supporting out-of-core applications.
  They are implementing an operating system for the NEC Cenju-3/DE, a
  shared-nothing MIMD multiprocessor with a multistage interconnection network
  and disks on every node. The operating system is based on Mach, and they have
  extended Mach to allow user-provided [local] replacement policies. Basically,
  they argue that you can get good performance as long as you write your own
  replacement policy (even OPT is possible in certain applications), and that
  this is easier than (re)writing the application with explicit out-of-core
  file I/O calls. They measure the performance of two applications on their
  system, with OPT, FIFO, and a new replacement algorithm customized to one of
  the applications. They show that they can get much better performance with
  some replacement policies than with others, but despite the paper's title
  they do not compare with the performance of an equivalent program using file
  I/O.}
}