Accession Number:

AD0760001

Title:

Storage Hierarchy Systems

Descriptive Note:

Doctoral thesis

Corporate Author:

MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH CAMBRIDGE PROJECT MAC

Personal Author(s):

• Madnick, Stuart E.

Report Date:

1973-04-01

Pagination or Media Count:

158.0

Abstract:

The relationship between the page size, program behavior, and page fetch frequency in storage hierarchy systems is formalized and analyzed. It is proven that there exist cyclic program reference patterns that can cause page fetch frequency to increase significantly if the page size used is decreased e. g., reduced by half. Furthermore, it is proven in Theorem 3 that the limit to this increase is a linear function of primary store size. Thus, for example, on a typical current-day paging system with a large primary store, the number of page fetches encountered during the execution of a program could increase 200- fold if the page size were reduced by half. The concept of temporal locality versus spatial locality is postulated to explain the relationship between page size and program behavior in actual systems. A design for a general multiple level storage hierarchy system is presented.

Descriptors:

• *COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
• *DATA STORAGE SYSTEMS
• ALGORITHMS
• EFFICIENCY
• PERFORMANCE(ENGINEERING)
• THESES

Subject Categories:

• Computer Programming and Software
• Computer Hardware
• Computer Systems Management and Standards

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE