A Hybrid Electrical/Optical Switch Architecture for Modular Data Centers
George Porter
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of California, San Diego
Friday, June 11, 2pm
Location: BA2135 (Bahen Centre)
Abstract:
The basic building block of ever larger data centers has shifted from a rack
to a modular container with hundreds or even thousands of servers. Delivering
scalable bandwidth among such containers is a challenge. A number of recent
efforts promise full bisection bandwidth between all servers, though with
significant cost, complexity, and power consumption. We present Helios, a
hybrid electrical/optical switch architecture that can deliver significant
reductions in number of switching elements, cabling, cost, and power
consumption relative to recently proposed data center network architectures.
We explore architectural tradeoffs and challenges associated with realizing
these benefits through the evaluation of a fully functional Helios prototype.
Bio:
George
Porter is a post-doctoral researcher in the Center for Networked Systems at UC
San Diego. His research interests include improving the scale, efficiency, and
reliability of large-scale distributed systems, with a current focus on the
datacenter. Prior to joining UCSD, George was a Principal Investigator at Sun
Microsystems, and before that, a member of the RAD Lab, a multidisciplinary
research center at U.C. Berkeley, where he co-developed X-Trace, a cross-layer
network tracing framework. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from the
University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. from the University of California,
Berkeley.
Host of Talk:
Yashar Ganjali (yganjali@cs.toronto.edu)