NSF P4 Switch

ADIABATIC MICROSERVICE LEVEL LOAD BALANCED FORWARDING ON PROGRAMMABLE ASIC SWITCH FOR ACCELERATING URGENT PROCESSES IN SCIENCE DATA CENTER NETWORKS

NSF Grant Award Number: 234679

Campus science data centers (Sci. DC) increasingly need support for more varied classes of workloads, mainly because many are interactive. Sci.DCs are using virtualization for better just-in-time distributed resource provisioning.  Also on the horizon are the microservices- a radically new software application architecture potent for fine-grained virtualization at scale. Virtualization and service-based applications demand new cyberinfrastructure functionality ultra-fast networked load balance (LB), at todays’ multi-terabyte line-rates while the micro-requesters and micro-servers need to dynamically move between physical hosts- at uncompromising line rates. Very recently, using programmable PISA pipe-lined ASIC hardware, Khan’s Advanced Networking Lab team has demonstrated a design of an in-network load-balancer switch that can achieve this fit and realize a weighted-cost multi-path (WCMP) algorithm at the line-rate of the hardware. The scheme has the production-scale path and application cardinality. The project aims to take it to the next step- towards a prototyping of this WCMP load balancing switch on programmable ASIC that is deployable at sci. DC. In conjunction with smart NICs, this smart switch will be ready to offer load balancing from inside the network in multiple modalities at full line speed. If successful, the technology will also enable the team to implement many other first of kind features in the switch including novel AI guided science security, and auto-scaling in container orchestration- important to the science datacenters in CCIs. It will be tested in the Integrated Computing Cluster (ICE). Kent’s Integrated Computing Environment (ICE) and the science.DMZ established as a part of two additional NSF research grants awarded to Dr. Khan’s team has become seminal in advancing interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation.  This Sci. DMZ and CCI is open to regional institutions brings STEM closer to the 36,000+ learners on the eight campuses, and faculty from the region.  This research and its broader impact component directly contributes towards cyberinfrastructure innovation and engineering for science applications and distributed research project and directly reflects NSF's statutory mission.

More information about this project and  research is available at http://medianet.kent.edu.