Parallel input/output (I/O) workload characterization studies are necessary to better understand the factors that dominate performance. When translated into system design principles, this knowledge can lead to systems with higher performance/cost ratios. In this paper, we present the experimental results of an I/O workload characterization study of NASA Earth and Space Sciences (ESS) applications. Measurements were collected using device driver instrumentation. Baseline measurements with no workload and measurements during regular application runs were collected, analyzed and correlated. It is shown how the observed disk I/O can be identified as block transfers, page requests and cache activity, and how the ESS applications are characterized by a high degree of spatial and temporal locality.
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