IO visor : it seems that the effort from Plumgrid around eBPF are picking up speed and an official linux foundation project is been setup. However one must wonder how such solution will compete against the pure user space solution relying on DPDK and consort? You can find a more in depth slide deck of the concept [here].
Libfabric : Intel is announcing in grand pomp the "Open source" library supporting its Omni path fabric. However it is not other that the fantastic Lib fabric. This library offer a set of next-generation, community-driven, ultra-low latency networking APIs. The APIs are not tied to any particular networking hardware model, it support Infiniband / Iwarp, usNic from Cisco, OPA from intel What is interesting is that it goes one step further than the RDMA library while maintaining a good balance between low level tuning and high level program-ability. While the learning curve might be a little bit more steep compared to Accelio from Mellanox it delivers ( I think ) greater advantage and flexibility.
Dolphin PCIe fabric : seems that the PCIe fabric is getting a lot of news recently, nice to see that we are reaching the 300 nanoseconds latency. While greater bandwidth and lower latency is really great this bring a certain amount of challenge as DRAM access time is still around 10-30 nanoseconds. Implying that if we the CPU needs to do anything with this data it only has ~250 nanoseconds to do so before moving to the next one. I wonder when we wills start to see event based GPGPU or FPGA approach in CPU in order to handle such performance. Maybe its time to move toward stream oriented CPU architecture ?
One-Time SSH Keys : I like this concept, it allow the use of single-use key ready for connecting to untrusted system. With single-use keys, even if the key is compromised, it will have already been used, and would be of little use.
China ARM : Homegrown ARM v8 based cpu chips. Seems that the Chinese are getting serious in leveraging homegrown solution in the CPU field and especially HPC. From this expertise they hope to spin off in the scale out computing (high density, low power). Maybe the ARM server breakthrough will come from the Asian market?
PCIe switch : after buying PLX avago is trying to ramp up the PCIe fabric business. The interesting bit will come up when it will start to compete against Intel omni path fabric. While PCIe fabric provide the advantage of direct device access and MR-IOV is really attractive a less HW and more Network oriented fabric might have certain advantage. Maybe we will start to see true heterogeneous Clos topology fabric in the future. PS: bonus patent for a PCIe fabric using non transparent bridge.
3Dx point and SAP HANA : while the post in itself is not that interesting ( enable bigger better in memory system). The responses from Hasso Plattner to it show a rather puzzling perspective, it seems that there is a disconnection between the "marketing" and actual real use case. HANA can "theoretically" be deployed on massive machine but in reality you only need a third of that. Basically very , I repeat, VERY few (to no) companies need that type of specs. Maybe, if SAP started to offer modular HANA solution over their clouds, customers will finally avoid the massive headache that is sizing (and adopt the product more easily). By modular I mean at providing Memory re-sizing at runtime with pay for what memory you consume model.
NVC-Hashmap : A Persistent and Concurrent Hashmap For Non-Volatile Memories
Redfish : Intel and other main player data center and systems management systems specification that aims to supply improved performance, functionality, scalability and security. Basically they are trying to sort out the IPMI and other ILO interface mess in order to offer a simple clean interface. Let's hope they achieve it.
Hints for Computer System Design : nice presentation and discution on how how Lampson's hints can still be used, some thirty years later, to implement functionally accurate, high-performing fault-tolerant software systems.
Workshop on Containers 2015 (WoC) : some interesting bits in that conference, Obviously the performance comparison ( linked yesterday) but the lesson learned slides show a very interesting bit regarding containers. It seems that the cost of security group is quite heavy as you scale the number of VM / containers.
Linux* Tutorial for Persistent Memory Programming Using Non-Volatile Memory Libraries : Updated NVM SDK tutorial from Intel. Some nice bit on transactional operations and a glimpse on future NVM performance in the backup slide: less than 20 usec read latency with software making the bulk of the cost and hardware taking less than 5 usec of the overall.
KVM forum : slide deck of the 2015 KVM forum, some gems in there especially related to the real time efforts.
A tale of two laws : As Amdahl’s law and Moore’s law reach their 50th anniversaries, this paper review the roles they have played in shaping both
perception and reality in high-performance computing. Along the way, it also attempt to clarify some misconceptions
that have surrounded both of these highly influential but not always fully appreciated ‘‘laws.’’
NVM Express - The Data Center and Client Storage Transformation: Loads of good stuff from Intel IDF 2015, i ll be distilling it over the next week. But this one is particularly interesting talk by Intel and DSSD folks ( acquired by EMC recently). It show how the new tech is trying to cut the CPU out of the loop as much as possible and storage start to embrace Memory type transaction model ( RDMA ). To a certain extend storage is just being absorbed back into the overall memory model. The interesting bit is that because of the current performance limitation of flash couple with the fabric capabilities there is a very small overhead in using remote storage vs local one.
Inside the Social Network’s (Datacenter) Network : A very insight full and deep look into Facebook data center networking. What's interesting to see is that there is a non negligible inter data center communication going on there.
BOOM : Berkeley Orders Of Magnitude project, Enabling the construction of data-rich systems at unprecedented scales using a minimum of software.
Eve : version 0 : a relational database, a new programming language, an IDE, and a UI editor, all built from scratch to fit our goals for a better programming foundation. Ambitious project, lets see how it develop.
