Rethinking the network stack for rack-scale computers
Paolo Costa, Hitesh Ballani, Dushyanth Narayanan · 2014
The rack is increasingly replacing individual servers as the basic building block of modern data centers. Fu-ture rack-scale computers will comprise a large number of tightly integrated systems-on-chip, interconnected by a switch-less internal fabric. This design enables thou-sands of cores per rack and provides high bandwidth for rack-scale applications. Most of the benefits promised by these new architectures, however, can only be achieved with adequate support from the software stack. In this paper, we take a step in this direction by focus-ing on the network stack for rack-scale computers. Us-ing routing and rate control as examples, we show how the peculiarities of rack architectures allow for new ap-proaches that are attuned to the underlying hardware. We also discuss other exciting research challenges posed by rack-scale computers. 1