Events
Photonics for Disaggregated Data Centers
Managed by Optica
22 March 2015
With increasingly challenging demands being placed on data centers, to perform many complex computational or network operations in addition to serving end users, there is growing pressure to find innovative low cost, efficient architectures. One approach is to move away from a host or servers based architecture and instead organize the various computing, memory, storage, and networking resources for maximum efficiency. This often means pooling common resources into central locations or realizing the data center as a supercomputer model. This approach can also be used to maximize application efficiency by taking advantage of the modularity of dis‐aggregation and choosing and / or updating resources that best meet the specific requirement.
Emerging photonic devices with potential applications will be discussed. We will develop a set of metrics for photonic devices and systems in disaggregated data center applications.
Key questions to be addressed:
- What does a photonic enabled disaggregated data center look like?
- What performance metrics/requirements are important for photonics in disaggregated data centers?
- How does the use of embedded optics impact disaggregation?
Who Should Attend:
- Chief Technology Officers
- Chief Executive Officers
- Project Managers
- Venture Capitalists
- Technical Marketing
- Strategic Planning
Products Discussed Include:
- System hardware.
- Network architecture.
- Optical components and subcomponents such as, optical switches, transceivers, connectors, fiber and cable.
Overview of the Workshop
With increasingly challenging demands being placed on data centers, to perform many complex computational or network operations in addition to serving end users, , there is growing pressure to find innovative low cost, efficient architectures. One approach is to move away from a host or servers based architecture and instead organize the various computing, memory, storage, and networking resources for maximum efficiency. This often means pooling common resources into central locations or realizing the data center as a supercomputer model. This approach can also be used to maximize application efficiency by taking advantage of the modularity of dis‐aggregation and choosing and / or updating resources that best meet the specific requirement.
Several advances in photonic devices and networks may play an important role in facilitating this technology trend. Low cost, efficient photonic devices can lower the barrier to moving optics on board or even on chip, can remove distance as a barrier and also add enhanced capabilities through the introduction of optical switching. Processors, memory, and storage are traditionally organized into a server platform in part due to limitations on the distances supported by high speed electrical interconnects. With the incorporation of recently developed silicon photonic optical transceivers the network interface card (NIC) is removed and instead the optical connections are brought to interfaces placed closer to the processor chips on the motherboard or daughter modules for power efficient, higher speed interconnects.
2015 Workshop Planning Committee
Keren Bergman, Charles Batchelor Professor and Chair, Electrical Engineering, Columbia UniversityShaya Fainman, Professor, University of California, San Diego
Madeleine Glick, Senior Research Scientist, College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona
Tom Hausken, Senior Industry Advisor, OSA
Dan Kilper, Administrative Director, Center for Integrated Access Networks
George Papen, Professor, University of California, San Diego
Nasser Peyghambarian, Director, Center for Integrated Access Networks
George Porter, Associate Director, Center for Networked Systems, UCSD
