A MIDDLE-WARE LEVEL CLIENT CACHE FOR A HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING I/O SIMULATOR

This thesis describes the design and run time analysis of the system level middle-ware cache for Hecios. Hecios is a high performance cluster I/O simulator. With Hecios, we provide a simulation environment that accurately captures the performance characteristics of all the components in a clusterwide parallel file system. Hecios was specifically modeled after PVFS2. It was designed to be extensible and to easily allow for various component modules to be easily replaced by those that model other system types. Built around the OMNeT++ simulation package, Hecios\u27 inner-cluster communication module is easily adaptable to any TCP/IP based protocol and all standard network interface cards, switches, hubs, and routers. We will examine the system cache component and describe a methodology for implementing other coherence and replacement techniques within Hecios. Similar to other cache simulation tools, we allow the size of the system cache to be varied independently of the replacement policy and caching technique used