The Scalable I/O Initiative (SIO) is a multi-institutional effort to attack the problem of moving data through massively parallel processors. We are participating in the Operating and File System Working Group, which also includes Princeton University, the University of Washington, Carnegie-Mellon Univesity, IBM, and Intel.
Our effort is concentrates on two related areas. First, we are investigating transport protocols used to connect MPPs to the external world. Specifically, we are porting the x-kernel to the Paragon OS, and using it as a framework for evaluating different protocols, including TCP. Second, we are studying the performance of the Paragon's Parallel File System (PFS), and collaborating with others in the OS working group to define a new application programming interface (API) to the file system.
[Bers94] B. Bershad, D. Black, D. DeWitt, G. Gibson, K. Li, L. Peterson, M. Snir. Operating System Support for High-Performance Parallel I/O Systems. Scalable I/O Initiative Working Paper No. 4, (1994).
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