TY - JOUR
T1 - Network Topologies for Composable Data Centers
AU - Ajibola, Opeyemi O.
AU - El-Gorashi, Taisir E.H.
AU - Elmirghani, Jaafar M.H.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in part by the INTelligent Energy aware NETworks (INTERNET) Project under Grant EP/H040536/1, in part by the SwiTching And tRansmission (STAR) Project under Grant EP/K016873/1, and in part by the Terabit Bidirectional Multi-user Optical Wireless System (TOWS) Project under Grant EP/S016570/1.
Funding Information:
Opeyemi O. Ajibola would like to thank his Ph.D. scholarship awarded by the Petroleum Technology Trust Fund (PTDF), Nigeria. All data is provided in the results section of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Suitable composable data center networks (DCNs) are essential to support the disaggregation of compute components in highly efficient next generation data centers (DCs). However, designing such composable DCNs can be challenging. A composable DCN that adopts a full mesh backplane between disaggregated compute components within a rack and employs dedicated interfaces on each point-to-point link is wasteful and expensive. In this paper, we propose and describe two (i.e., electrical, and electrical-optical) variants of a network for composable DC (NetCoD). NetCoD adopts a targeted design to reduce the number of transceivers required when a mesh physical backplane is deployed between disaggregated compute components in the same rack. The targeted design leverages optical communication techniques and components to achieve this with minimal or no network performance degradation. We formulate a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to evaluate the performance of both variants of NetCoD in rack-scale composable DCs that implement different forms of disaggregation. The electrical-optical variant of NetCoD achieves similar performance as a reference network while utilizing fewer transceivers per compute node. The targeted adoption of optical technologies by both variants of NetCoD achieves greater (4 - 5 times greater) utilization of available network throughput than the reference network which implements a generic design. Under the various forms of disaggregation considered, both variants of NetCoD achieve near-optimal compute energy efficiency in the composable DC while satisfying both compute and network constraints. This is because marginal concession of optimal compute energy efficiency is often required to achieve overall optimal energy efficiency in composable DCs.
AB - Suitable composable data center networks (DCNs) are essential to support the disaggregation of compute components in highly efficient next generation data centers (DCs). However, designing such composable DCNs can be challenging. A composable DCN that adopts a full mesh backplane between disaggregated compute components within a rack and employs dedicated interfaces on each point-to-point link is wasteful and expensive. In this paper, we propose and describe two (i.e., electrical, and electrical-optical) variants of a network for composable DC (NetCoD). NetCoD adopts a targeted design to reduce the number of transceivers required when a mesh physical backplane is deployed between disaggregated compute components in the same rack. The targeted design leverages optical communication techniques and components to achieve this with minimal or no network performance degradation. We formulate a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to evaluate the performance of both variants of NetCoD in rack-scale composable DCs that implement different forms of disaggregation. The electrical-optical variant of NetCoD achieves similar performance as a reference network while utilizing fewer transceivers per compute node. The targeted adoption of optical technologies by both variants of NetCoD achieves greater (4 - 5 times greater) utilization of available network throughput than the reference network which implements a generic design. Under the various forms of disaggregation considered, both variants of NetCoD achieve near-optimal compute energy efficiency in the composable DC while satisfying both compute and network constraints. This is because marginal concession of optimal compute energy efficiency is often required to achieve overall optimal energy efficiency in composable DCs.
KW - Composable data centers
KW - data center networks
KW - disaggregated data centers
KW - energy efficient networks
KW - MILP
KW - optical communication
KW - optical routing networks
KW - silicon photonic
KW - wavelength division multiplexing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85113333981&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3106375
DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3106375
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85113333981
SN - 2169-3536
VL - 9
SP - 120955
EP - 120984
JO - IEEE Access
JF - IEEE Access
M1 - 9519656
ER -