Specialized Systems: Blending Hardware and Software (in English)

In this meetup we dive into specialized systems that are not purely software or hardware based, but focus on systems and solutions that include a unique combination of architecture and algorithms. Such solutions may change the boundaries between hardware and software, and introduce new components into the software/hardware stack that together can optimize overall system performance.We bring two examples from operating systems and storage, to highlight work that goes beyond mundane computer science and include a fusion of hardware and software.
In collaboration with SYSTOR 2022 - https://www.systor.org/2022/

Agenda:
(14:30) Gathering, registration, mingling
(15:00) Prof. Mark Silberstein, Technion: Accelerator-centric distributed OS for heterogeneous servers and data-centers
(15:45) Refreshments
(16:00) Edward Bortnikov, Ph.D - VP Technology, Pliops: Key-Value Storage Revolutionized with Hardware Accelerated Storage Engine

Session #1: Accelerator-centric distributed OS for heterogeneous servers and data-centers / Prof. Mark Silberstein
Future systems will be omni-programmable: alongside CPUs, GPUs, Security accelerators and FPGAs, they will execute user code near-storage, near-network, and near-memory. Ironically, while breaking power and memory walls via hardware specialization and near data processing, the emerging programmability wall will become a key impediment for materializing the promised performance and power
efficiency benefits of omni-programmable systems. I argue that the root cause of the programming complexity lies in today's CPU-centric operating system (OS) design which is no longer appropriate for omni-programmable systems. In this talk I will describe the ongoing efforts in my lab to build an accelerator-centric OS called OmniX, which extends standard OS abstractions into accelerators, while maintaining a coherent view of the system among all the processors. In OmniX, near-data computation accelerators may directly invoke tasks and access I/O services among themselves, excluding the CPU from the performance-critical data and control plane operations, and turning the CPU into a “yet another” accelerator for sequential computations.

I will show how the OmniX OS enables high efficiency at a level of a single server. Further, I will demonstrate that the OmniX design principles are future-proof: they are equally applicable to a large-scale disaggregated data center environment as we show via our recent data-center scale operating system called FractOS.

Session #2: Key-Value Storage Revolutionized with Hardware Accelerated Storage Engine/ Edward Bortnikov, Ph.D
Multiple modern data management platforms have at their core a key-value storage engine -- a performance-critical component that abstracts away the physical storage properties and provides access to the data as a collection of key-value pairs. In recent years, storage engine technologies came under a spotlight as the SSD speed skyrocketed and the traditionally fast CPU's emerged as the new bottleneck. We present XDP(TM) (Xtreme Data Processor) - a specialized hardware platform designed by Pliops that accelerates key-value access to SSD drives by an order of magnitude. Applications tap into XDP through the XDP Rocks (TM) C++ library, which is API-compatible with RocksDB - a popular open-source storage engine. We demonstrate the XDP Rocks decisive performance gains versus its software baseline, through microbenchmarks as well as application-level measurements.

## About the Speakers

1. Prof. Mark Silberstein
   Mark Silberstein is an Associate Professor at the Technion Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the head of the Accelerated Computer Systems Lab (ACSL) https://acsl.group
   ACSL research covers a broad range of computer systems topics, including operating systems and programming abstractions for emerging hardware, such as GPUs, programmable switches
   and I/O accelerators, as well as systems security, including trusted execution environments and defenses against side channel attacks. Some of the projects graduated from the lab and have been adopted by industry. Mark is a recipient of the ACM EuroSys Jochen Liedke Young Research Award 2020.
2. Edward Bortnikov, Ph.D
   Edward Bortnikov is VP Technology for Pliops, a data acceleration company. He oversees the company’s research and development of next-generation products. Prior to Pliops, he served as Sr. Director of Research at Yahoo!, where he led the Scalable Systems research group, with significant contributions to open source data platforms deployed at a huge scale. Edward holds a PhD (EE) in distributed systems and networking from Technion, Haifa.