Vector Layout in Virtual-Memory Systems for Data-Parallel Computing

In a data-parallel computer with virtual memory, the way in which vectors are laid out on the disk system affects the performance of data-parallel operations. We present a general method of vector layout called banded layout, in which we divide a vector into bands of a number of consecutive vector elements laid out in column-major order, and we analyze the effect of the band size on the major classes of data-parallel operations. We find that although the best band size varies among the operations, choosing fairly small band sizes—at most a track—works well in general.