Strategies to improve I/O cache performance

Knowing how different types of data use an input/output cache increase the effectiveness of the cache. To evaluate this information, I/O call traces drive an I/O cache simulator. The authors discuss the tracing and simulation tools, the simulation environment, experiments and results. Information from the system call level determines the type of requests. Since the trace is based on file names rather than disk block numbers, the file system maintenance, executable, and application data are all visible. Each data type has different reference behavior. Each cache size supports different types to differing degrees. Properly exploiting these properties increased the reference hit rate in the I/O cache and reduced the number of references out of the cache to disk.