@InProceedings{sinclair:instability,
  author = {James B. Sinclair and Jay Tang and Peter J. Varman},
  title = {Instability in Parallel {I/O} Systems},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IPPS~'94 Workshop on Input/Output in Parallel
  Computer Systems},
  year = {1994},
  month = {April},
  pages = {16--35},
  organization = {Rice University},
  note = {Also appeared in Computer Architecture News 22(4)},
  later = {sinclair:instability-book},
  keywords = {parallel I/O, pario-bib},
  comment = {They study the performance of a parallel I/O system when several
  concurrent processes are accessing a shared set of disks, using a common
  buffer pool. They found that under certain circumstances the system can
  become unstable, in that some subset of processes monopolize all of the
  resources, bringing the others to a virtual halt. They use analytical models
  to show that instability can occur if every process has distinct input and
  output disks, reads are faster than writes, disk scheduling policy of a
  certain class, and processes don't wait for other resources.}
}