Smart Network Interface Controller Systems Software for High Performance Networks

高性能网络（HPN）是大规模计算系统的关键方面。大规模计算系统使现代生活成为可能，大规模云计算机促进社交媒体互动，娱乐，在线会议，并使我们的智能手机更智能，功能更强大。它们还有助于高性能计算（HPC），用于人工智能（AI），科学模拟以了解我们的宇宙，甚至模拟COVID-19传播。大型系统可以通过更好的资源管理功能提高生产力。不幸的是，这很难在不消耗系统用来完成其任务的计算资源（CPU时间、存储器等）的情况下完成。此外，为了更好的计算系统管理而使用计算资源会干扰在大型系统上运行的应用，甚至可能使它们变慢。然而，HPN智能网络接口控制器（SmartNIC）的最新进展可以通过将应用程序所需的高性能计算资源的资源管理负担卸载到系统中的新计算组件SmartNIC来提供帮助。 现代的HPN智能CPU是网络速度不断提高的结果，这需要将HPN组件设计转移到用于具有大硅芯片尺寸的CPU的尖端硅生产技术。电气工程方面的考虑意味着HPN现在有接口控制器，这些接口控制器的晶体管空间远远超过执行其网络功能所需的空间。SmartCore填补了这一空白，将计算能力添加到了“空白硅”中。然而，利用这种新的计算能力是困难的。智能CPU编程具有挑战性，并且具有与主计算CPU环境分离的固有缺点。这就需要新的软件工程来利用智能化，并完全重新思考过去的系统软件方法。我们将利用SmartCloud开发新的资源管理系统软件，避免此类方法在需要与主要计算任务共享资源时遇到的开销问题。我们还将开发新的系统软件，以利用网络中计算资源的位置，创建新的分布式软件，可以协调与系统中其他计算节点的通信，而不会干扰应用程序。我们将为SmartNIC开发革命性的新故障恢复、数据操作和分段技术，使现有的HPC应用程序能够无缝地利用SmartNIC系统软件的性能优势。所有这些技术都可以用来显著提高加拿大公共HPC极端规模系统的性能，提高加拿大工业HPC工程仿真的竞争力，同时在一个非常高的需求领域培养3名博士，2名硕士和3名本科生。

High Performance Networks (HPNs) are a critical aspect to large-scale computing systems. Large-scale computing systems make modern life possible, with large-scale Cloud computers facilitating social media interactions, entertainment, online meetings and making our smartphones smarter and more versatile. They also contribute to High Performance Computing (HPC) that is utilized for Artificial Intelligence (AI), scientific simulations for understanding our universe and even simulations of COVID-19 transmission. Large-scale systems can be more productive with better resource management capabilities. Unfortunately, this is difficult to accomplish without consuming computing resources that the systems are using to accomplish their tasks (CPU time, memory, etc.). Furthermore, using computing resources for better computing system management disturbs the applications running on the large systems, potentially even slowing them down. However, recent advances in HPN Smart Network Interface Controllers (SmartNICs) can help by offloading the resource management burden from the high-performance compute resources that applications need to a new compute component in the system, the SmartNIC. Modern HPN SmartNICs are a result of ever increasing network speeds, which required moving HPN component design to cutting-edge silicon production techniques used for CPUs with large silicon die sizes. Electrical engineering concerns meant that HPNs now had interface controllers that had much more space for transistors than was needed to perform their networking functions. SmartNICs filled this void by adding compute capabilities into the "blank silicon" that was left available. However, taking advantage of this new compute capability is difficult. SmartNICs are challenging to program and have the inherent disadvantage of being separated from the main compute CPU environment. This requires novel software engineering to take advantage of SmartNICs and completely rethinking past systems software approaches. We will leverage SmartNICs to develop novel resource management systems software, avoiding the overhead issues that such approaches suffered from when they needed to share resources with the main compute tasks. We will also develop novel system software to take advantage of the placement of compute resources in the network, creating new distributed software that can co-ordinate communication with other compute nodes in the system without perturbing applications. We will develop revolutionary new failure recovery, data manipulation and staging techniques for SmartNICs, allowing existing HPC applications to seamlessly take advantage of SmartNIC system software performance benefits. All of these techniques can be used to significantly increase Canadian public HPC extreme-scale systems performance, increasing Canada's industrial HPC engineering simulation competitiveness while training 3 PhD, 2 MSc and 3 undergraduate students in a very high demand sector.