Dynamic Optical Switching for Latency Sensitive Applications

Dynamic optical interconnects using fast Optical Circuit Switches (OCS) are emerging as a scalable and energy efficient alternative to increasing network demands. Initial concerns regarding slow switching speeds of OCSs were recently overcome, with prototypes enabling circuit setup in a few microseconds. This can potentially broaden the classes of traffic patterns that can be carried efficiently by an alloptical interconnect. However, application performance on such newer interconnects has not been fully understood yet. In this paper, we explore the the gap between advances in faster OCS hardware and the potential success of such newer technologies in terms of application performance and cluster energy efficiency. We evaluate the performance of latencysensitive distributed applications running on a fast OCS environment, analyzing its impact to overall server and network energy efficiency. We also discuss scheduling inefficiencies of current fast OCSs and evaluate ideas to solve them....

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: ANCS
• Authors: Henrique Rodrigues, Richard D. Strong, Alper Sinan Akyurek, Tajana Simunic Rosing
• Keywords: ANCS 2015, Computer Networks