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doctoral thesis

Bridging the gap between dataplanes and commodity operating systems

Prekas, Georgios  
2018

The conventional wisdom is that aggressive networking requirements, such as high packet rates for small messages and microsecond-scale tail latency, are best addressed outside the kernel, in a user-level networking stack. In particular, dataplanes borrow design elements from network middleboxes to run tasks to completion in tight loops. In its basic form, the dataplane design leverages sweeping simplifications such as the elimination of any resource management and any task scheduling to improve throughput and lower latency. As a result, dataplanes perform best when the request rate is predictable (since there is no resource management) and the service time of each task has a low execution time and a low dispersion. On the other hand, they exhibit poor energy proportionality and workload consolidation, and suffer from head-of-line blocking. This thesis proposes the introduction of resource management to dataplanes. Current dataplanes decrease latency by constantly polling for incoming network packets. This approach trades energy usage for latency. We argue that it is possible to introduce a control plane, which manages the resources in the most optimal way in terms of power usage without affecting the performance of the dataplane. Additionally, this thesis proposes the introduction of scheduling to dataplanes. Current designs operate in a strict FIFO and run-to-completion manner. This method is effective only when the incoming request requires a minimal amount of processing in the order of a few microseconds. When the processing time of requests is (a) longer or (b) follows a distribution with higher dispersion, the transient load imbalances and head-of-line blocking deteriorate the performance of the dataplane. We claim that it is possible to introduce a scheduler to dataplanes, which routes requests to the appropriate core and effectively reduce the tail latency of the system while at the same time support a wider range of workloads.

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Type
doctoral thesis
DOI
10.5075/epfl-thesis-8673
Author(s)
Prekas, Georgios  
Advisors
Bugnion, Edouard  
Jury

Prof. Willy Zwaenepoel (président) ; Prof. Edouard Bugnion (directeur de thèse) ; Prof. James Larus, Prof. Adam Belay, Prof. Ryan Stutsman (rapporteurs)

Date Issued

2018

Publisher

EPFL

Publisher place

Lausanne

Public defense year

2018-06-01

Thesis number

8673

Total of pages

113

Subjects

datacenter

•

virtualization

•

networking

•

operating system

•

energy proportionality

•

resource management

•

scheduling

•

work stealing

•

work conservation

•

dataplane

EPFL units
DCSL  
Faculty
IC  
School
IINFCOM  
Doctoral School
EDIC  
Available on Infoscience
May 23, 2018
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/146590
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