A Survey on Improving Network Architecture of Data-intensive System

PhD Qualifying Examination


Title: "A Survey on Improving Network Architecture of Data-intensive System"

Miss Ang LI


Abstract:

Today's data-intensive system may contain tens of thousands of computers with 
significant aggregate bandwidth requirement. The network architecture typically 
is a hierarchy of routers and switches. Moreover, the routers and switches 
needed are increasingly specialized and expensive when moving up the network 
hierarchy. However, even though deploying the expensive highest-end 
switches/routers, the resulting network may only support half of the aggregate 
bandwidth available at the edge of the network. Based on this situation, how to 
deliver more performance at less cost when building large-scale clusters 
becomes an active research area. This survey presents existing work on this 
topic. First, we introduce specialized hardware and protocols for building 
communication fabric for large-scale clusters which is commonly leveraged by 
industrial community. Second, we present a more compatible scheme to address 
this issue by interconnections based on commodity switches, such as fat-tree, 
DCell and BCube. Third, we introduce hybrid packet-switched/circuit-switched 
network which is a newly proposed scheme by taking use of circuit switching in 
supercomputing area. Finally, we discuss possible topics for future research in 
this area.


Date:  			Friday, 29 January 2010

Time:                   9:00am - 11:00am

Venue:                  Room 3501
 			lifts 25/26

Committee Members:      Dr. Lin Gu (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Lionel Ni  (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Brahim Bensaou
 			Dr. Qian Zhang


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