@Article{thakur:applications,
  author = {Rajeev Thakur and Ewing Lusk and William Gropp},
  title = {{I/O} in Parallel Applications: The Weakest Link},
  journal = {The International Journal of High Performance Computing
  Applications},
  year = {1998},
  month = {Winter},
  volume = {12},
  number = {4},
  pages = {389--395},
  note = {In a Special Issue on I/O in Parallel Applications},
  URL = {http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~thakur/papers/ijsa-article.ps},
  keywords = {parallel I/O application, pario-bib},
  abstract = {Parallel computers are increasingly being used to run large-scale
  applications that also have huge I/O requirements. However, many applications
  obtain poor I/O performance on modern parallel machines. This special issue
  of IJSA contains papers that describe the I/O requirements and the techniques
  used to perform I/O in real parallel applications. We first explain how the
  I/O application program interface (API) plays a critical role in enabling
  such applications to achieve high I/O performance. We describe how the
  commonly used Unix I/O interface is inappropriate for parallel I/O and how an
  explicitly parallel API with support for collective I/O can help the
  underlying I/O hardware and software perform I/O efficiently. We then
  describe MPI-IO, a recently defined, standard, portable API specifically
  designed for high-performance parallel I/O. We conclude with an overview of
  the papers in this special issue.}
}