Understanding Manycore Scalability of File Systems

Authors: 

Changwoo Min, Sanidhya Kashyap, Steffen Maass, Woonhak Kang, and Taesoo Kim, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: 

We analyze the manycore scalability of five widelydeployed file systems, namely, ext4, XFS, btrfs, F2FS, and tmpfs, by using our open source benchmark suite, FXMARK. FXMARK implements 19 microbenchmarks to stress specific components of each file system and includes three application benchmarks to measure the macroscopic scalability behavior. We observe that file systems are hidden scalability bottlenecks in many I/Ointensive applications even when there is no apparent contention at the application level. We found 25 scalability bottlenecks in file systems, many of which are unexpected or counterintuitive. We draw a set of observations on file system scalability behavior and unveil several core aspects of file system design that systems researchers must address.

Open Access Media

USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.

BibTeX
@inproceedings {196192,
author = {Changwoo Min and Sanidhya Kashyap and Steffen Maass and Taesoo Kim},
title = {Understanding Manycore Scalability of File Systems},
booktitle = {2016 {USENIX} Annual Technical Conference ({USENIX} {ATC} 16)},
year = {2016},
isbn = {978-1-931971-30-0},
address = {Denver, CO},
pages = {71--85},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/min},
publisher = {{USENIX} Association},
month = jun,
}
Download
Min PDF
View the slides

Presentation Audio