SWIFT: A storage architecture for large objects

Abstract

The authors describe an input/output architecture called Swift that addresses the problem of storing and retrieving very large data objects from slow secondary storage at very high data rates. Swift addresses the problem of providing data rates required by digital video by exploiting the available interconnection capacity and by using several slower storage devices in parallel. Two studies have been performed to validate the Swift architecture: a simulation study and an Ethernet-based, proof-of-concept implementation. Both studies indicate that the aggregation principle proposed in Swift can yield very high data-rates.