Join us for another remote-friendly Networked Systems Tech Talk at 12:45–1:45 p.m. on Friday, February 10. Nik Sultana of the Department of Computer Science will host a “watch party” on the Mies campus, but anyone can attend the lecture remotely. Register for “The Time is Ripe for Disaggregated Systems” here.

Speaker Sergey Blagodurov is a Research Scientist at AMD since 2013. He works on redesigning datacenters for the Composable era. Prior to AMD, he has been a Research Associate with HP Labs for three years, where he studied and contributed to the design and operation of net-zero energy data centers. Sergey received a PhD degree in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada in 2013.

Abstract of the talk: Disaggregation has recently emerged as a potent solution to tackle the challenge of growing resource consumption of the datacenter infrastructure. According to the disaggregated datacenter vision, compute units (CPUs, GPUs, accelerators) are decoupled from the memory hierarchy, with all components connected by the datacenter fabric. To stem the rise of the infrastructure costs, disaggregation emphasizes just-in-time resource allocation and re-purposing. When a workload demands resources, easily accessible, hot-swappable compute or memory components are removed where they are underutilized and are added where they are needed the most on-the-fly, without deploying additional servers and adding excessive capacity. This is unlike in traditional (i.e., aggregated) datacenters, where adding compute capacity requires the addition of entire new servers with expensive memory and network, which leads to underutilization of resources and increases costs for additional space, power, and management overhead. The goal of this talk is to draw attention to the emerging field of disaggregated systems, introduce the standardization efforts that industry is pursuing, and outline topics for future research in this key area.

Find out about about the lecture series and subscribe to related talks here.