Parallel I/O from the user´s perspective

Parallel I/O systems are gaining popularity as a means for providing scalable high bandwidth I/O. In this paper we develop abstract models of parallel I/O systems and provide empirical results that shout how I/O intensive applications interact with the elements of parallel I/O systems. The abstract models are useful for explaining parallel I/O performance to developers of applications requiring high performance I/O and the experimental results provide insight into the I/O performance of present generation parallel machines. We also identify optimizations for improving I/O performance, which should be useful for developers of applications and I/O libraries