PARALLEL FILE ACCESS FOR IMPLEMENTING DYNAMIC LOAD BALANCING ON A MASSIVELY-PARALLEL COMPUTER

Because a massively parallel computer processes vast amounts of data a nd generates many access requests from multiple processors simultaneou sly, parallel secondary storage requires large capacity and high concu rrency. One effective method of implementation of such secondary stora ge is to use disk arrays which have multiple disks connected in parall el. In this paper, we propose a parallel file access method named DECO DE (dynamic express changing of data entry) in which load balancing of each disk is achieved by dynamic determination of the write data posi tion. For resolution of the problem of data fragmentation which is cau sed by the relocation of data during a write process, the concept of ' 'Equivalent Area'' is introduced. We have performed a preliminary perf ormance evaluation using software simulation under various access stat uses by changing the access pattern, access size and stripe size and c onfirmed the effectiveness of load balancing with this method.