A File Is Not a File: Understanding the I/O Behavior of Apple Desktop Applications

  • Authors:
  • Tyler Harter;Chris Dragga;Michael Vaughn;Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau;Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison;University of Wisconsin-Madison;University of Wisconsin-Madison;University of Wisconsin-Madison;University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

We analyze the I/O behavior of iBench, a new collection of productivity and multimedia application workloads. Our analysis reveals a number of differences between iBench and typical file-system workload studies, including the complex organization of modern files, the lack of pure sequential access, the influence of underlying frameworks on I/O patterns, the widespread use of file synchronization and atomic operations, and the prevalence of threads. Our results have strong ramifications for the design of next generation local and cloud-based storage systems.