SBIR Phase I: Radically Improving Data Center Cost Effectiveness through Virtualized Convergence of Data Processing and Storage

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是以一种非常经济有效的方式扩展数据中心。全球信息技术业务规模已达3.7万亿美元，数据中心是未来全球信息技术基础设施日益重要的基石。通过提供及时的解决方案来提高数据中心的成本效益，该项目将有助于加速基于数据中心的云服务渗透到更广泛的应用程序中，从而产生相当大的技术和社会影响。此外，由于该项目颠覆性地打破了传统计算、存储和网络之间的界限，它的成功将影响整个行业从根本上重新思考和重新创新数据中心的设计和实现，以促进未来信息技术产业的发展。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将开发一个颠覆性产品的工作演示，该产品可以显著提高未来数据中心基础设施的成本效益。随着摩尔定律不可避免的放缓和数据量的快速增长，传统的数据中心设计实践需要巨大的资金投入，这将严重影响未来数据中心的成本效益。旨在从根本上解决数据中心成本效益的挑战，该项目将开发一个软件/硬件集成产品的工作演示，该产品可以以非常低的成本在数据中心内内聚处理数据存储和处理任务。关键的智力价值在于从根本上重新思考计算、存储和网络之间的实现和协调。对于数据中心中的关键数据处理任务，该产品的性能至少比cpu高出一个数量级，同时显著提高内存/存储层次结构的效率。跨多个服务器节点安装的软硬件集成产品可以进一步形成一个虚拟化平台，可以非常高效地实现节点间的数据传输和计算协调。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable the scaling of data centers in a very cost effective way. Global information technology business is reaching $3.7 Trillion, and data centers are an increasingly important cornerstone of future global information technology infrastructure. By providing timely solutions to improve the cost effectiveness of data centers, this project will contribute to accelerating the penetration of data center based cloud services into a wider spectrum of applications and hence generate considerable technical and societal impact. In addition, as the project disruptively relaxes the traditional distinct boundary among computation, storage, and networking, its success will influence the entire industry to fundamentally re-think and re-innovate data center design and implementation for future information technology industry advancement.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a working demonstration of a disruptive product that can significantly improve the cost effectiveness of future data center infrastructure. With inevitable slowing-down of Moore's Law and rapid growth of data volume, the conventional data center design practice demands formidable capital investment, which will seriously undermine the cost effectiveness of future data centers. Aiming to fundamentally address the data center cost effectiveness challenge, this project will develop a working demonstration of a software/hardware integrated product that can cohesively handle data storage and processing tasks in data centers at very low cost. The key intellectual merit is to fundamentally re-think the realization and coordination among computing, storage and networking. The product can outperform CPUs by at least an order of magnitude for critical data processing tasks in data centers and meanwhile significantly improve memory/storage hierarchy efficiency. The software/hardware integrated products installed across multiple server nodes can further form a virtualized platform, with which inter-node data transfer and computation coordination can be realized very efficiently.