CAREER: Communication Synchrony

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Today’s data center networks provide best-effort service—it is impossible to predict the time taken to transmit data across the network. Such unpredictability reduces the set of assumptions that system designers can rely upon from the network, resulting in correctness issues, poor performance and scalability, and high resource overheads. This project aims to design predictable data center networks. Such networks will enable systems that are not only correct by design, but also achieve orders of magnitude better performance and efficiency than today’s systems. Predictable data center networks also have the potential to enable technologies and applications that are infeasible today. This project will also have broader community impact through educational and outreach activities that include creation of publicly available pedagogical materials and tools, and participation in programs that aim to improve the fraction of undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds choosing computer science as a major. This project introduces a fundamentally new service model—communication synchrony—that enables data center networks to guarantee bounded, predictable, data transmission times. The project will be organized around three core research thrusts: (1) design and implementation of distributed packet-switched data center networks that enable communication synchrony; (2) development of a theoretical framework to establish fundamental limits, as well as Pareto-optimal designs for networks that enable communication synchrony; and (3) demonstration of the benefits of communication synchrony by designing end-host network stacks that can achieve microsecond-scale latency while scaling to Terabit Ethernet. Communication synchrony has the potential to provide solutions to some of the most difficult and important technical questions surrounding distributed systems, operating systems and end-host hardware for the post-Moore era.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.