CSR: Small: Enabling In-Network Computation for Datacenter Applications

随着数据中心流量的增加，可编程网络设备(如可重新配置的交换机和可定制的网络加速器)的出现推动了网络内计算的使用。当今最新的可重新配置的交换机支持可配置的每数据包处理，包括可定制的数据包头、可定制的数据包处理以及维护交换机内部状态的能力。鉴于这一硬件趋势，该项目寻求将计算操作卸载到中间网络设备上，以提供从分布式存储到大数据分析和分布式机器学习等广泛的应用服务，从而优化数据中心应用的运营。该项目的主要目标是建立一个编程框架，以实现使用可编程网络硬件的网络内计算。在设计和实施此框架时，该项目解决了以下研究问题：首先，该项目解决了如何最好地将可重新配置的交换机和网络加速器集成到数据中心网络中，因为它们都有可以执行的操作方面的限制。其次，一个关键的项目目标是为这些可编程设备确定什么是简单但功能强大的编程应用程序接口(API)，以支持广泛类别的应用程序。第三，解决的另一个关键挑战是如何保持这些设备上的状态和计算与应用程序服务器的状态和计算一致，以及如何共同设计数据中心应用程序以利用此范例带来的性能优势。该项目旨在提高全球数十亿人每天使用的网络密集型数据中心应用的效率。通过提高他们的效率，可以大幅降低数据中心服务的成本，并使开发新的公共服务的成本大大降低。不同交换机供应商的协作者在这一努力中是平等的合作伙伴，他们提供获得新技术的机会，并协助向行业转让技术。该项目将吸收本科生作为研究人员，该项目的材料将被纳入本科生和研究生课程。该项目的一个关键目标是公开发布开发的软件，并启用一套丰富的高性能数据中心应用程序。所有软件将在开发完成后立即公布，通过位于https://github.com/arvindkrish/incbricks的GitHub托管，并可从华盛顿大学的项目网站访问。该储存库的镜像版本将在大学保留至少五年。

The emergence of programmable network devices, such as reconfigurable switches and customizable network accelerators, along with the increasing traffic of data centers, motivate the use of in-network computation. Today's latest reconfigurable switches support configurable per-packet processing, including customizable packet headers, customizable packet processing, and the ability to maintain state inside the switch. Given this hardware trend, this project seeks to offload computing operations onto intermediate networking devices for a broad range of application services ranging from distributed storage to big data analytics and distributed machine learning, thus optimizing the operations of data center applications. The project's primary goal is to build a programming framework to enable in-network computing using programmable networking hardware. In designing and implementing this framework, the project addresses the following research questions: First, the project tackles how to best integrate reconfigurable switches and network accelerators into a data center network, as they both have limitations in terms of the operations that they can execute. Second, a key project goal is to identify what is a simple and yet powerful programming application program interface (API) for these programmable devices to support a broad class of applications. Third, another key challenge addressed is how to keep state and computations on these devices consistent with that of application servers, and how to co-design data center applications to take advantage of the performance benefits enabled by this paradigm. This project seeks to improve the efficiency of network-intensive data center applications that are used by literally billions of people around the globe on a daily basis. By improving their efficiency, one can dramatically reduce the cost of data center services as well as make it much cheaper for new public services to be developed. Collaborators at various switch vendors are equal partners in this effort, providing access to new technologies as well as assisting in technology transfer to the industry. The project will integrate undergraduate students as researchers, and material from the project will be incorporated into both undergraduate and graduate courses.A key project goal is to publicly release developed software and enable a rich set of high-performance data center applications. All software will be made public as soon as they are developed, hosted via GitHub at https://github.com/arvindkrish/incbricks and accessible from the project website at the University of Washington. A mirrored version of this repository will be maintained at the University for at least five years.