Multi-tenant data centers and cloud computing are one of the fastest growing segments of the computer industry, with more than $50B of infrastructure spending each year. This has created a ready adoption path for new technology innovations that is beginning to change almost every aspect of how computer systems are built and used. This course will be a cross-disciplinary discussion of the technologies underlying next generation data centers and the research challenges needed to leverage those technologies. Work will involve a selection of paper readings, class discussions, a few short conceptual problem sets, and an independent research or education project. Topics will tentatively include: hardware acceleration, dark silicon, low latency terabit programmable networks, RDMA, openflow, virtualization, resource isolation, SLA management, disaggregation, non-volatile low power DRAM replacements like Optane, and multi-data center resilience.
This is a post-quals course, but it is also appropriate for fifth year masters students and pre-quals PhD students. The topics covered should be complementary to domain-specific courses in architecture, networking, operating systems, and distributed systems.
Location: Gates G04, Tuesday/Thursday at 11:30 - 12:50
The reading list, calendar, and presenter assignments for this quarter can be found here
Project proposals for the winter 2020 quarter can be found here (UW NetID protected).