File I/O control method

A file management server for enabling a plurality of processes to access the same file in a shared manner, comprising:

• means for receiving hint information including a file I/O request from each of said plurality of processes, and information on a file region accessed by all of said plurality of processes;
• means for reserving a buffer for holding data in the file region notified by the hint information, said file region being accessed by all of said plurality of processes;
• means for collectively reading the data in the file region specified by the hint information, said file region being accessed by all of said plurality of processes, from a disk to said reserved buffer when the file I/O request from each of said plurality of processes is a file read request;
• means for collectively writing the contents of said buffer into a disk when the file I/O request from each of said plurality of processes is a file write request;
• and
• means for completing file I/O processing when a file I/O request is issued from each process by intermemory-copying data between a data region of said process and a region of said buffer corresponding thereto.

A file I/O control method in a parallel computing system having a plurality of computing nodes and at least one I/O node, said method comprising the steps of:

• executing a plurality of processes on said plurality of computing nodes, respectively;
• based on hint information indicative of a data block required by a plurality of collective I/O read requests for reading the same file from said plurality of processes, reserving a buffer in said I/O node for a portion of said data block held by said I/O node, out of said data block indicated by said hint information;
• responding to a first collective I/O read request by writing said data block held by said I/O node into said buffer in response to said first collective I/O read request, and reading a data block corresponding to said first collective I/O read request from said data block written into said buffer;
• and
• responding to a subsequent collective I/O read request by reading a data block corresponding to said collective I/O read request from said data block written into said buffer.

A file I/O control method in a parallel computing system having a plurality of computing nodes and at least one I/O node, said method comprising the steps of:

• executing a plurality of processes on said plurality of computing nodes, respectively;
• based on hint information indicative of a data block required by a plurality of collective I/O write requests for writing the same file from said plurality of processes, reserving a buffer in said I/O node for a portion of said data block held by said I/O node, out of said data block indicated by said hint information;
• responding to each of said plurality of collective I/O write requests to write a data block associated with the collective I/O write request into a region of said buffer for the collective I/O write request;
• and
• holding the data block written into said buffer in said I/O node after writing a data block into said buffer associated with a last collective I/O write request.

A file I/O control method in a parallel computing system having a plurality of computing nodes and at least one I/O node, said method comprising the steps of:

• executing a plurality of processes on said plurality of computing nodes, respectively;
• based on hint information indicative of a data block required by a plurality of collective I/O requests for accessing the same file from said plurality of processes, reserving a buffer in said I/O node for a portion of said data block held by said I/O node, out of said data block indicated by said hint information;
• and
• responding to each of said plurality of collective I/O requests by accessing a region of said buffer corresponding to the collective I/O request.