Abstract: A distributed file system including a plurality of compute nodes and a plurality of input/output (I/O) nodes connected by an interconnection network wherein the system is adapted to use a common data representation for both physical and logical partitions of a file stored in the system and wherein the partitions are linearly addressable. Also provided is a method of operating a distributed file system including a plurality of input/output (I/O) nodes and a plurality of compute nodes, the method including partitioning a file into a plurality of subfiles distributed across a plurality of I/O nodes; logically partitioning a file by setting a view on it, computing mappings between a linear space of a file and a linear space of a subfile, computing the intersection between a view and a subfile, and performing data operations.

Abstract: The present invention provides a distributed file system comprising a plurality of compute nodes and a plurality of input/output (I/O) nodes connected by an interconnection network wherein the system is adapted to use a common data representation for both physical and logical partitions of a file stored in the system and wherein the partitions are linearly addressable. The invention also provides a method of operating a distributed file system comprising a plurality of input/output (I/O) nodes and a plurality of compute nodes, the method comprising the steps of partitioning a file into a plurality of subfiles distributed across a plurality of I/O nodes; logically partitioning a file by setting a view on it; computing mappings between a linear space of a file and a linear space of a subfile; computing the intersection between a view and and a subfile; and performing data operations.