Abstract-Current datacenters are based on server machines, whose mainboard and hardware components form the baseline, monolithic building block that the rest of the system software, middleware and application stack are built upon. This leads to the following limitations: (a) resource proportionality of a multitray system is bounded by the basic building block (mainboard), (b) resource allocation to processes or virtual machines (VMs) is bounded by the available resources within the boundary of the mainboard, leading to spare resource fragmentation and inefficiencies, and (c) upgrades must be applied to each and every server even when only a specific component needs to be upgraded. The dRedBox project (Disaggregated Recursive Datacentre-ina-Box) addresses the above limitations, and proposes the next generation, low-power, across form-factor datacenters, departing from the paradigm of the mainboard-as-a-unit and enabling the creation of function-block-as-a-unit. Hardware-level disaggregation and software-defined wiring of resources is supported by a full-fledged Type-1 hypervisor that can execute commodity virtual machines, which communicate over a low-latency and high-throughput software-defined optical network. To evaluate its novel approach, dRedBox will demonstrate application execution in the domains of network functions virtualization, infrastructure analytics, and real-time video surveillance.

This paper showcases the first experimental demonstration of disaggregated memory using the dReDBox optical Data Centre architecture. Experimental results demonstrate the 4-tier network scalability and performance of the system at the physical and application layer.

The disaggregated dRedBox Data Centre architecture is proposed that enables dynamic allocation of pooled compute and memory resources. An orchestration platform is described and algorithms are simulated that demonstrate the efficient utilization of IT infrastructure.

This paper proposes and experimentally evaluates a fully developed novel architecture with purpose built low latency communication protocols for next generation disaggregated data centers (DDCs). In order to accommodate for capacity and latency needs of disaggregated IT elements (i.e. CPU, memory), this architecture makes use of a low latency and high capacity circuit switched optical network for interconnecting various endpoints, that are equipped with multi-channel Silicon photonic based integrated transceivers. In a move to further decrease the perceived latency between various disaggregated IT elements, this paper proposes a) a novel network topology, which cuts down the latency over the optical network by 34% while enhancing system scalability and b) channel bonding over multicore fiber (MCF) switched links to reduce head to tail latency and in turn increase sustained memory bandwidth for disaggregated remote memory. Furthermore, to reduce power consumption and enhance space efficiency, the integration of novel multi core fiber (MCF) based transceivers, fibers and optical switches are proposed and experimentally validated at the physical layer for this topology. It is shown that the integration of MCF based subsystems in this topology can bring about an improvement in energy efficiency of the optical switching layer which is above 60%. Finally, the performance of this proposed architecture and topology is evaluated experimentally at the application layer where the perceived memory throughput for accessing remote and local resources is measured and compared using electrical circuit and packet switching. The results also highlight a multi fold increase in application perceived memory throughput over the proposed DDC topology by utilization and bonding of multiple optical channels to interconnect disaggregated IT elements that can be carried over MCF links.