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Helios: a hybrid electrical/optical switch architecture for modular data centers

Authors:

Nathan Farrington,

Sivasankar Radhakrishnan,

Hamid Hajabdolali Bazzaz,

Vikram Subramanya,

Yeshaiahu Fainman,

Amin VahdatAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCOMM '10: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2010 conference

Pages 339 - 350

https://doi.org/10.1145/1851182.1851223

Published: 30 August 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The basic building block of ever larger data centers has shifted from a rack to a modular container with hundreds or even thousands of servers. Delivering scalable bandwidth among such containers is a challenge. A number of recent efforts promise full bisection bandwidth between all servers, though with significant cost, complexity, and power consumption. We present Helios, a hybrid electrical/optical switch architecture that can deliver significant reductions in the number of switching elements, cabling, cost, and power consumption relative to recently proposed data center network architectures. We explore architectural trade offs and challenges associated with realizing these benefits through the evaluation of a fully functional Helios prototype.

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Cited By

Liu LXu XZhou PChen XErgu DYu HSun GGuizani M(2025)PSscheduler: A parameter synchronization scheduling algorithm for distributed machine learning in reconfigurable optical networksNeurocomputing10.1016/j.neucom.2024.128876616(128876)Online publication date: Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2024.128876
Riadi S(2024)A SDN-Controlled High-Performance Optical Network for Datacenters2024 13th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Performance Evaluation and Modeling in Wired and Wireless Networks (PEMWN)10.23919/PEMWN62766.2024.10737572(1-6)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.23919/PEMWN62766.2024.10737572
Patronas GTerzenidis NKashinkunti PZahavi ESyrivelis DCapps LWertheimer ZArgyris NFevgas AThompson CGanor ABernauer JMentovich EBakopoulos P(2024)Optical switching for data centers and advanced computing systems [Invited]Journal of Optical Communications and Networking10.1364/JOCN.53431717:1(A87)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.534317
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Index Terms

Helios: a hybrid electrical/optical switch architecture for modular data centers
1. Networks
  1. Network types
    1. Packet-switching networks
    2. Wired access networks

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCOMM '10: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2010 conference

August 2010

500 pages

ISBN:9781450302012

DOI:10.1145/1851182

General Chairs:
Shiv Kalyanaraman
IBM Research, India
,
Venkat Padmanabhan
Microsoft Research, India
,
K. K. Ramakrishnan
IBM Research, India
,
Rajeev Shorey
NIIT University, India
,
Program Chairs:
K. K. Ramakrishnan
IBM Research, India
,
Geoffrey M. Voelker
University of California, San Diego, USA

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume 40, Issue 4
SIGCOMM '10
October 2010
481 pages
ISSN:0146-4833
DOI:10.1145/1851275
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCOMM: ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 30 August 2010

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SIGCOMM '10: ACM SIGCOMM 2010 Conference

August 30 - September 3, 2010

New Delhi, India

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Overall Acceptance Rate 462 of 3,389 submissions, 14%

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Cited By

Liu LXu XZhou PChen XErgu DYu HSun GGuizani M(2025)PSscheduler: A parameter synchronization scheduling algorithm for distributed machine learning in reconfigurable optical networksNeurocomputing10.1016/j.neucom.2024.128876616(128876)Online publication date: Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2024.128876
Riadi S(2024)A SDN-Controlled High-Performance Optical Network for Datacenters2024 13th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Performance Evaluation and Modeling in Wired and Wireless Networks (PEMWN)10.23919/PEMWN62766.2024.10737572(1-6)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.23919/PEMWN62766.2024.10737572
Patronas GTerzenidis NKashinkunti PZahavi ESyrivelis DCapps LWertheimer ZArgyris NFevgas AThompson CGanor ABernauer JMentovich EBakopoulos P(2024)Optical switching for data centers and advanced computing systems [Invited]Journal of Optical Communications and Networking10.1364/JOCN.53431717:1(A87)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.534317
Li WYuan GWang ZTan GZhang PRouskas G(2024)Fast and scalable all-optical network architecture for distributed deep learningJournal of Optical Communications and Networking10.1364/JOCN.51169616:3(342)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.511696
Sheikh ISakib MHoque MHasan Hamim INoor JAl Islam A(2024)Short Paper: SuperArchitecture: A New Approach for Reconnaissance over Data Centers Considering Architectural AlternativesProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Networking, Systems, and Security10.1145/3704522.3704552(254-259)Online publication date: 19-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704522.3704552
Kumar ADevraj ABunandar DSingh R(2024)A case for server-scale photonic connectivityProceedings of the 23rd ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks10.1145/3696348.3696856(290-299)Online publication date: 18-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3696348.3696856
De Marchi FLi JBai WXia YSekar VYu MSeneviratne AVeitch D(2024)POSTER: Opportunistic Credit-Based Transport for Reconfigurable Data Center Networks with TidalProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2024 Conference: Posters and Demos10.1145/3672202.3673714(4-6)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672202.3673714
Lei YDe Marchi FJoshi RLi JChandrasekaran BXia YSekar VYu MSeneviratne AVeitch D(2024)DEMO: An Open Research Framework for Optical Data Center NetworksProceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2024 Conference: Posters and Demos10.1145/3672202.3673712(86-88)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672202.3673712
De Marchi FBai WLi JXia Y(2024)Rethinking Transport Protocols for Reconfigurable Data Centers: An Empirical StudyProceedings of the 1st SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Optical Technologies and Applications in Networking10.1145/3672201.3674120(7-13)Online publication date: 4-Aug-2024
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Chang YHecht OLeitersdorf DSchneider PKuznetsov PGelles ROlivetti D(2024)Universally Optimal Information Dissemination and Shortest Paths in the HYBRID Distributed ModelProceedings of the 43rd ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing10.1145/3662158.3662791(380-390)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
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