1. Interconnection Networks ◦ Terminology, basics, examples Optical Interconnects ◦ Motivation ◦ Architecture examples for Data Centers and HPC ◦

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Optical Interconnects

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Interconnection Networks◦ Terminology, basics, examples

Optical Interconnects◦ Motivation◦ Architecture examples for Data Centers and HPC◦ Building blocks◦ Sum-up - issues

Outline

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Parallel systems need the processors, memory, and switches to be able to communicate with each other◦ The connections between these elements define

the interconnection network

Interconnection Networks: What is an interconnection network?

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Node◦ Can be either processor, memory, or switch

Link◦ The data path between two nodes (Bundle of wires that

carries a signal) Neighbor node

◦ Two nodes are neighbors if there is a link between them Degree

◦ The degree of a node is the number of its neighbors Message

◦ Unit of transfer for network clients (e.g. cores, memory) Packet

◦ Unit of transfer for network

Interconnection Networks: Terminology

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Topology ◦ Specifies way switches are wired ◦ Affects routing, reliability, throughput, latency, building ease

Layout and Packaging Hierarchy◦ The nodes of a topology are mapped to packaging modules,

chips, boards, and chassis, in a physical system Routing

◦ How does a message get from source to destination ◦ Static or adaptive

Flow control and Switching paradigms◦ What do we store within the network? ◦ Entire packets, parts of packets, etc? ◦ Circuit switching vs packet switching

Performance◦ Throughput, latency. Theoretically and via simulations

Interconnection Networks: Basics

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Direct topology and indirect topology◦ In direct topology: every network client has a

switch (or router) attached◦ In indirect topology: some switches do not have

processor chips connected to them, they only route

Static topology and dynamic topology

Interconnection Networks: Topology

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Examples (Direct topologies):


6-linear array

6-ring

6-ring arranged to use short wires

2D 16-Mesh 2D 16-Torus 3D 8-Cube

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Examples (Indirect topologies):


Trees

H-layout

Fat Tree

Fat Trees: Fatter links (really more of them) as you go up

8-node butterfly

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Theoretical topology evaluation metrics:◦ Bisection width: the minimum number of wires that must be cut when the

network is divided into two equal sets of nodes.

◦ Bisection Bandwidth:The collective bandwidth over bisection width◦ Ideal Throughput: throughput that a topology can carry with perfect flow

control (no idle cycles left on the bottleneck channels) and routing (perfect load balancing). Equals the input bandwidth that saturates the bottleneck channel(s) for given traffic pattern. For uniform traffic (bottleneck channels = bisection channels):

◦ Network Diameter◦ Average Distance (for given traffic pattern). For uniform traffic:◦ Average zero Load Latency (related to average distance)

Simulations◦ Throughput, average latency vs offered traffic (fraction of capacity) for different

traffic patterns


Topology optimized for Prototype Traffic Patterns

Traffic patterns (locality, message size, inter-arrival times) play an important role

HPC applications exhibit well defined communication patterns (“13 kernels” identified)

Super LU: locality (low degree of connectivity topologies are efficient)

FFT: large, global, point-to-point communication (topologies with good bisection width needed)

Super LU HPC application

FFT HPC application

DataCenters are multi-tenant environments, various applications, wide variations of requirements (eg for Cloud DCs 75% of traffic remains intra rack).

Hot: Mapreduce – Hadoop application

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Interconnection Networks: Layout and Packaging Hierarchy

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Blue Gene/L


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Layout: important, since it improves the cost performance of the resulting architecture, both by reducing its cost (fewer chips, boards, and assemblies) and by lowering various performance hindrances, such as signal propagation delay, power losses.

Layout area depends on the wiring layers


Collinear layout for a hypercube

2-D layout for a hypercube

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Packaging: must take into account board pinout limitations, component footprints.


board

boardboard

OR

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• Topologies with small diameter and large bisection bandwidth: greater path diversity, allow more traffic to be exchanged among nodes/routers (=better throughput)

• But, topologies with large node degree: fixed number of pins partitioned across a higher number of adjacent nodes. Thinner channels: greater serialization latency.


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The quality of an interconnection network should be measured by how well it satisfies the communication requirements of different target applications.

On the other hand, problem-specific networks are inflexible and good “general purpose” networks should be opted for.


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Interconnection Networks: Routing

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Cray -“Jaguar”: ◦ 3D torus network◦ Blade: 4 network connections◦ Cabinet(Rack): 192 Opteron Processors – 776 Opteron

Cores, 96 nodes◦ System: 200 cabinets

Interconnection Networks: Real HPC (High Performance Computing) systems

A single Node

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Interconnection Networks: Real HPC (High Performance Computing) systems

Blue Gene/Q:◦ 5D Torus, 131.072 nodes (system level)

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Interconnection Networks: Data Center topology

• Most of the current data centers: based on commodity switches for the interconnection network.

• Fat-tree 2-Tier or 3-Tier architecture Fault tolerant (e.g. a ToR switch is usually

connected to 2 or more aggregate switches) Drawbacks:

◦ High power consumption of switches and high number of links required.

◦ Latency (multiple store-and-forward processing).

In the front-end: route the request to the appropriate server.

Servers (up to 48) as blades

Top Of Rack switch1 Gbps links

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Power consumption and size: main set of barriers in next‐generation interconnection networks (Data Centers, High Performance Computing).

Predictions that were made back in 2008‐09 concluded that supercomputing machines of 2012 would require 5MWs of power and in 2020 will require a power of 20MWs.

These predictions were based on historical HPC industry trends that designated by that time a 10x increase in HPC computational power every 4 years, coming at the expense of 1.5x more cost and 2x more consumed power.

In 2012: The K‐supercomputer has already reached the 10Pflops performance, requiring however approximately 10MW of power instead of the 5MW predictions four years ago!!


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Solution: optical interconnects Q: where to attach the optics?

A: Wherever possible. As close to as possible to the processor Critical issues: Cost, Reliability, Performance


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Devices that are widely used in optical networks:◦ Splitter and combiner: fiber optic splitter: passive device that can distribute the

optical signal (power) from one fiber among two or more. A combiner: the opposite.◦ Coupler: passive device that is used to combine and split signals but can have

multiple inputs and outputs. ◦ Arrayed-Waveguide Grating (AWG): AWGs are passive data-rate independent

optical devices that route each wavelength of an input to a different output. They are used as demultiplexers to separate the individual wavelengths or as multiplexers to combine them.

◦ Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS): A WSS is typical an 1xN optical component than can partition the incoming set of wavelengths to different ports (each wavelength can be assigned to be routed to different port). It can be considered as reconfigurable AWG and the reconfiguration time is a few milliseconds.

◦ Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Switches (MEMSswitches): MEMS optical switches are mechanical devices that physically rotate mirror arrays redirecting the laser beam to establish a connection between the input and the output. T he reconfiguration time is a few millisec.

◦ Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA): Optical Amplifiers. Fast switching time, energy efficient.

◦ Tunable Wavelength Converters (TWC): A tunable wavelength converter generates a configurable wavelength for an incoming optical signal.


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Hybrid Schemes: ◦ Easily implemented (commodity switches)◦ Slow switching time (MEMs). Good only for bulky traffic that lasts long◦ Not scalable (constraint by Optical switch ports)

Optical Interconnects: DCs

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Eg Petabit switch fabric: three-stage Clos network and each stage consists of an array of AGWRs that are used for the passive routing of packets.

In the first stage, the tunable lasers are used to route the packets through the AWGRs, while in the second and in the third stage TWC are used to convert the wavelength and route accordingly the packets to destination port.

Optical Interconnects: DCs

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Eg RAPID: N = C (Clusters)*B (Boards)*D (Nodes per Board)

Optical Interconnects: HPC

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No new wavelengths needed for intercluster network

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Optical Interconnects: HPC•RAPID (1, 4, 4)•wavelength used for s->d communication:

:

:

•Home channels( ) : multiplexed on same channel:

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N=64. Comparing RAPID with 3 electronic networks (Fat tree, Torus, Hypercube) via Simulations.

For complement traffic( ) performance of RAPID: worse than electr networks


Traffic patterns, RWA: huge impact on performance

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Optical Interconnects: building blocks

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Different losses


VCSELs (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser)

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(IBM-Columbia University): 3D stacking, lots of data on chip. Circuit Switching.

Optical Interconnects: Networks On Chip (NOC)

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Photonic layer: PSE (Photonic Switching element) based on silicon ring resonator


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High Order Switch Designs


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Optical Interconnects: Networks On Chip (NOC)•G: gateways, locations on

each node where a host can initiate or receive data transmissions. •X:4x4 non-blocking photonic switches •Torus requires an additional access network. ‘I’ (injection) and ‘E’ (ejection) to facilitate entering and exiting the main network

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Insertion loss

P:Optical Power, S:detector sensitivity, ILmax: insertion loss of the worst case optical path, n:number of wavelengths

P, S, ILmax: in dB. P – S: optical power budget


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Noise


Power dissipation: the total energy dissipated accounting from all individual devices found in the network model.

Scalability issues in Data Centers and HPC cluster interconnects: ◦ BW * Distance limitation of electronic interconnects ◦ Non-linear cost increase with size◦ High power consumption

Next Generation systems: Photonic technology introduced at all levels (on-chip, on-board, board-to-board, rack-to-rack)

New building blocks: optical routers, PCBs, active optical cables

New building blocks: Reconsider topologies and architectures◦ Topology?

Direct or Indirect network? Homogeneous, non-homogeneous?

◦ Mapping to the packaging hierarchy and constraints introduced by layout?

Optical Interconnects: sum-up

Board Architecture

To Backplane

(router) node

Number of chips per router, number of waveguides for chip-to-board communication Number of (router) nodes on board/ Topology Number of waveguides for router-to-router communication Do all or some routers have waveguides exiting the board – homogeneous vs. non-

homogeneous topologies Layout of topology in waveguide levels

Processor chip

Optical router

PCB

Waveguide bundle

Example: 2D torus at board level (16 nodes per board)

Backplane Architecture

To Backplane

Backplane

Waveguides

AOC (Active Optical Cable)for board to Storage

AOC for board-to-board interconnection

Number of boards per backplane Topology/ number of waveguides between boards Backplane-to-backplane and –to-storage communication Could have non-homogenous backplane with some boards having only routers

(without processor chips) to handle traffic exiting the backplane

Board slotExample (cont): 3D torus at backplane level (256 nodes=16 boards of 16 nodes)

Overall architecture Example (cont) : interconnected 3D tori at rack level via AOC

Tori: Great performance for applications with locality. Good scalability But is it the best solution?

Architecture and topology studies: Theoretical evaluation of families of topologies. Metrics: bisection bandwidth,

diameter, average distance, ideal throughput, taking into account packaging Performance estimation via simulations (Optoboard Simulator is built) using

realistic traffic patterns (studies on traffic profiles are carried out) Topology layout (including waveguide routing) Switching paradigms (Packet vs Circuit) in relation to traffic characteristics Topology optimized for Prototype Traffic Patterns

256 node 3D Torus

Documents

1. Interconnection Networks ◦ Terminology, basics, examples Optical Interconnects ◦ Motivation ◦ Architecture examples for Data Centers and HPC ◦