System Software
I/O Optimization, Operating Systems
Prefetching disk blocks effectively reduces subsequent disk access times, allowing applications to load and run more quickly. Successful prefetching depends on the accuracy with which upcoming disk I/O can be predicted, measured by the buffer cache hit-rate, and many authors have tried to improve this accuracy. However, most techniques incur significant memory and CPU overheads, and the predictions they make are not particularly accurate. In addition, existing prefetching approaches have largely focused on reducing application launch time, which is the delay in starting a program.
