SBIR Phase I: Scaling Cluster Computing Fabrics with Optical Networking

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将来自开发技术，使企业，云计算，学术和政府网络运营商能够经济高效地扩展计算机集群，以支持对这些系统不断增长的需求。计算机集群支撑着企业、研究人员和社会越来越广泛的服务，从机器学习系统到在线社交媒体平台。公司越来越多地使用计算机集群来获得竞争优势并加速产品开发。当今的网络技术每两年性能提高两倍，但在某些细分市场中，对集群计算系统的需求增长速度超过两倍。通过该项目开发的技术能够很好地超越当前网络技术的成本和性能扩展限制，使商业和科学最终用户能够更快地找到解决更复杂问题的方案。这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目展示了通过透明光交换机路由流量的计算机集群网络互连的可行性。光交换机消除了网络结构中的通信瓶颈，但与当今技术相比，需要对分布式应用程序在网络上传输信息的方式进行根本性的改变。该技术的商业成功取决于其加速常见分布式应用程序执行的能力，同时提供网络运营商所期望的互操作性，可靠性和可扩展性。该项目旨在展示与当今技术相比，网络绑定应用程序的执行速度提高了2倍。为实现这一目标而提出的研究包括开发和优化将商品应用程序与结构连接所需的软件堆栈，量化受光交换约束的应用程序的性能，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响评审标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result from developing technology to enable enterprise, cloud, academic, and government network operators to cost-effectively scale computer clusters to support the growing demands on these systems. Computer clusters underpin an increasingly broad range of services that businesses, researchers, and society have come to rely on, from machine learning systems to online social media platforms. Companies increasingly use computer clusters to gain a competitive advantage and accelerate product development. Today's networking technologies improve in performance by a factor of two every two years, but the demand placed on cluster computing systems is growing more than twice that fast in some market segments. The technology developed through this project is well-positioned to exceed the cost and performance scaling limitations of current networking technology, enabling business and scientific end-users to find solutions to more complex problems more quickly.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project demonstrates the feasibility of a network interconnect for computer clusters that routes traffic through transparent optical switches. Optical switches remove communication bottlenecks in the network fabric but require fundamental changes in how distributed applications communicate information across the network compared to present-day technologies. The commercial success of the technology depends on its ability to accelerate the execution of common distributed applications while providing the interoperability, reliability, and manageability expected by network operators. This project aims to demonstrate a 2x improvement in the execution speed of network-bound applications compared to today's technologies. The proposed research to reach this goal includes developing and optimizing the software stack necessary to interface commodity applications with the fabric, quantifying the performance of those applications subject to the constraints imposed by optical switching, and optimizing the optical switch design to maximize application performance at a system level.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.