PIOUS for PVM

PIOUS is a complete Parallel I/O System for the PVM 3 distributed computing environment. Just as PVM implements a virtual multicomputer on top of a heterogeneous network of computing resources, PIOUS implements a fully functional parallel file system on top of PVM. PVM applications obtain transparent access to shared permanent storage via PIOUS library functions.

PIOUS is intended to serve both as a platform for supporting high-performance parallel applications, and as a vehicle for parallel file system research. PIOUS implements the traditional functionality found in most parallel computer file systems, as well as a number of unique features, including:

two-dimensional file objects and logical file views,
coordinated file access with guaranteed consistency semantics,
data declustering for scalable performance,
transaction support and user-selectable fault tolerance modes,
extended file maintenance primitives for managing declustered files, and
C and Fortran language bindings.

PIOUS should work on most systems that support PVM 3. To date, PIOUS has been tested on the following: Sun4/SunOS 4.1.3/5.3-4, SGI/IRIX 4.0.5/5.3, Dec Alpha/OSF1 2.1, HP 9000/HP-UX, and IBM RS6000/AIX. Versions of PIOUS are installed at hundreds of sites, and the software appears to be stable.

PIOUS Source and Documentation

PIOUS 1.2.2 source (pious1.2.2.tar.z.uu), a compressed/uuencoded tar file.
PIOUS 1.2 documentation (piousUG1.2.ps.z.uu), a compressed/uuencoded postscript file.

The PIOUS documentation contains detailed installation information, as well as a complete user's guide and reference manual.

The PIOUS software is distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License Version 2 (LGPL), as published by the Free Software Foundation, and is provided " as is " without any warranty. A copy of the LGPL is included with the software distribution and details the terms of the license. Note that the LGPL does allow proprietary applications to make use of the PIOUS software.

PIOUS Support and Bug Report

The developers of PIOUS will provide support as time permits. Questions and problems should be directed to pious@mathcs.emory.edu. Please be as specific as possible in any bug reports, and be sure to include machine type as well as operating system, PVM, and PIOUS version numbers.

Any problems that are known to exist for a particular release are listed in the

PIOUS bug report, an ASCII text file,

along with a workaround (if any) and the release that corrects the problem. This report will be updated as problems are encountered and resolved. It is highly recommended that this report be consulted before installing PIOUS on your system.

For now, the usenet news group comp.parallel.pvm should be used as an avenue for discussion about PIOUS.

PIOUS Release History

The following is a brief time-line of PIOUS releases, and the enhancements provided by each:

1.2.2 (05/95): Data server scheduling algorithm updated to improve performance for conflicting accesses; previous scheduler bug corrected.
Data server caching algorithm changed to Segmented LRU to limit the cache flooding caused by extended sequential access patterns.
1.2.1 (01/95): Fortran language bindings added, along with the necessary updates to the documentation.
1.1.2 (12/94): Initial system release.

PIOUS Technical Reports

The following PIOUS technical reports are available in postscript format:

CSTR-950601: Characterizing Concurrency Control Performance for the PIOUS Parallel File System: Presents a detailed performance study of the PIOUS concurrency control mechanism. Scalability and stability results are given for benchmark applications executed on Sandia's HEAT cluster. Subsumes CSTR-950202.
CSTR-950202: Scalable Concurrency Control for Parallel File Systems: Presents a detailed discussion of the scalable, light-weight concurrency control mechanism employed by PIOUS. Preliminary performance results are given for a benchmark application executed on Sandia's high-performance HEAT cluster.
Presented at the IOPADS workshop of the 1995 International Parallel Processing Symposium.
CSTR-941101: Parallel I/O as a Parallel Application: Presents a complete overview of the PIOUS architecture and interface. Benchmark results are given for both standard and fault-tolerant file access in a low-performance cluster environment. Subsumes CSTR-940302 and CSTR-940101.
Revised version to appear in the International Journal of Supercomputer Applications, 9(2), 1995.
CSTR-940302: PIOUS: A Scalable Parallel I/O System for Distributed Computing Environments: Presents a brief overview of PIOUS. Focuses on benchmark results for both standard and fault-tolerant file access in a low-performance cluster environment.
Revised version appeared in the Proceedings of the Scalable High-Performance Computing Conference, 1994.
CSTR-940101: A Parallel I/O System for High-Performance Distributed Computing: Presents a complete overview of the PIOUS architecture and interface.
Revised version appeared in the Proceedings of the IFIP WG10.3 Working Conference on Programming Environments for Massively Parallel Distributed Systems, 1994.

PIOUS Developers

Other Sites of Interest

PIOUS for PVM / Emory University / pious@mathcs.emory.edu