Optically Connected Memory for Disaggregated Data Centers

Recent advances in integrated photonics enable the implementation of reconfigurable, high-bandwidth, and low energy-per-bit interconnects in next-generation data centers. We propose and evaluate an Optically Connected Memory (OCM) architecture that disaggregates the main memory from the computation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2020-08
Main Authors: Gonzalez, Jorge, Gazman, Alexander, Hattink, Maarten, Palma, Mauricio G, Bahadori, Meisam, Rubio-Noriega, Ruth, Orosa, Lois, Glick, Madeleine, Mutlu, Onur, Bergman, Keren, Azevedo, Rodolfo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computation
Computer centers
Computer simulation
Connectors
Data centers
Dynamic random access memory
Energy consumption
Nodes
Performance evaluation
Photonics
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Recent advances in integrated photonics enable the implementation of reconfigurable, high-bandwidth, and low energy-per-bit interconnects in next-generation data centers. We propose and evaluate an Optically Connected Memory (OCM) architecture that disaggregates the main memory from the computation nodes in data centers. OCM is based on micro-ring resonators (MRRs), and it does not require any modification to the DRAM memory modules. We calculate energy consumption from real photonic devices and integrate them into a system simulator to evaluate performance. Our results show that (1) OCM is capable of interconnecting four DDR4 memory channels to a computing node using two fibers with 1.07 pJ energy-per-bit consumption and (2) OCM performs up to 5.5x faster than a disaggregated memory with 40G PCIe NIC connectors to computing nodes.
ISSN:2331-8422