Virtual memory versus file interfaces for large, memory-intensive scientific applications

Authors:
Yoonho Park;Ridgway Scott;Stuart Sechrest
Affiliations:
High Performance Computing Center, University of Houston, Houston, TX;High Performance Computing Center, University of Houston, Houston, TX;Software Systems Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Venue:
Supercomputing '96 Proceedings of the 1996 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing
Year:
1996

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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.