International Workshop on RESource DISaggregation in High-Performance Computing

Abstract

Disaggregation is an emerging compute paradigm that splits existing monolithic servers into a number of consolidated single-resource pools that communicate over a fast interconnect. This model decouples individual hardware resources and enables the creation of logical compute platforms with flexible and dynamic hardware configurations. The concept of disaggregation is driven by various recent trends in computation. From an application perspective, the increasing importance of data analytics and machine learning workloads brings unprecedented need for memory capacity, which is in stark contrast with the growing imbalance in the peak compute-to-memory capacity ratio of traditional system board based servers. At the hardware front, the proliferation of heterogeneous, special-purpose computing elements promotes the need for composable platforms, while the increasing maturity of optical interconnects elevates the prospects of better distance tolerance in networking infrastructure. The workshop intends to explore various aspects of resource disaggregation, composability, and their implications for future HPC platforms.