Summary: Semantically­Smart Disk Systems
Muthian Sivathanu, Vijayan Prabhakaran, Florentina I. Popovici, Timothy E. Denehy,
Andrea C. Arpaci­Dusseau, and Remzi H. Arpaci­Dusseau
Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Abstract
We propose and evaluate the concept of a semantically­smart
disk system (SDS). As opposed to a traditional ``smart'' disk, an
SDS has detailed knowledge of how the file system above is us­
ing the disk system, including information about the on­disk data
structures of the file system. An SDS exploits this knowledge to
transparently improve performance or enhance functionality be­
neath a standard block read/write interface. To automatically
acquire this knowledge, we introduce a tool (EOF) that can dis­
cover file­system structure for certain types of file systems, and
then show how an SDS can exploit this knowledge on­line to
understand file­system behavior. We quantify the space and time
overheads that are common in an SDS, showing that they are not
excessive. We then study the issues surrounding SDS construc­
tion by designing and implementing a number of prototypes as

Source: Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi - Department of Computer Sciences, Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Liblit, Ben - Department of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences