POSIX 1003.1b Asynchronous Input/Output

Asynchronous Input/Output allows a process (thread) to start multiple simultaneous read and/or write operations to multiple files, to wait for or obtain notification of completion of requested operations, and to retrieve the status of completed operations. The purpose of the POSIX Asynchronous I/O facility is to allow a process (thread) to overlap some elements of computation and information processing with I/O processing. The POSIX Asynchronous I/O facility includes the following interface functions:

Asynchronous I/O Control Block (aiocb)

The Asynchronous I/O Control Block is used as a parameter to all of the asynchronous I/O functions. The aiocb specifies parameters for an asynchronous I/O operation in a call to aio_read() , aio_write(), or lio_listio() and then may be used as a "handle" for the enqueued asynchronous I/O operation in a subsequent call to aio_cancel(), aio_suspend(), aio_fsync(), aio_error(), or aio_return(). The aiocb structure is defined in sys/aio.h .

Summary of Change

This is new functionality that is being introduced in 11.0.

The following is the list of manpages for the POSIX Asynchronous I/O system calls:

aio_cancel(2)

aio_error(2)

aio_fsync(2)

aio_read(2)

aio_return(2)

aio_suspend(2)

aio_write(2)

lio_listio(2)

aio(5)

Impact

The addition of this new functionality does not impact the operation of the rest of the system.