2DIO: A Cache-Accurate Storage Microbenchmark

TL;DR

2DIO is a microbenchmark tool that generates customizable, cache-accurate I/O traces with complex behaviors, enabling detailed exploration and replication of cache effects in various systems.

Contribution

The paper introduces 2DIO, a novel microbenchmark framework that produces tunable, cache-accurate traces with complex behaviors, surpassing existing tools' capabilities.

Findings

2DIO can generate traces with diverse cache behaviors including cliffs and plateaus.

The framework accurately reproduces real-world cache traces.

Parameters are portable across system scales, maintaining relative cache effects.

Abstract

We introduce 2DIO, a microbenchmark creating cache-accurate, stressful I/O traces. While existing tools are limited to generating traces with well-behaved, concave hit ratio curves, 2DIO produces ones with tunable complex cache behaviors, particularly performance cliffs and plateaus. Our framework encodes a workload as a compact parameter triplet, capturing both short-term recency and long-term frequency. This parsimonious parameterization allows researchers to easily translate individual adjustments into predictable cache effects across various eviction policies, and enables the parameter space to be "swept" for exhaustive exploration of desired cache behavior, or to mimic real traces by calibrating parameters to match observed behaviors. The tuned parameters are portable, meaning if the scale of the system under evaluation changes, so too will the footprint and length of the trace, while the relative cache behaviors are preserved. Evaluations demonstrate 2DIO's ability to generate traces across a continuum of "what-if" cache behaviors and to reproduce real-world ones with high accuracy.