Invited Paper: Disaggregating Applications Using Uniservices
Xin-Wen Wang, Robbert van Renesse · 2023
The current method for building software infrastructure in disaggregated data centers involves creating new virtual machine monitors or operating system kernels that make the underlying hardware appear as a group of logical servers. Although this approach is effective for maintaining backward compatibility, we suggest that it would be more beneficial to invest in redesigning the applications themselves to be disaggregated along physical boundaries. We propose uniservices, a new programming paradigm that utilizes the actor model and is highly specialized for a single type of hardware resource for disaggregated architecture. Applications would be built from these uniservices, communicating over fast interconnects and a shared log. This approach simplifies operating systems while making better use of available hardware resources.