Engineers develop techniques to improve efficiency of cloud infrastructure by as much as 20 percent
March 7, 2013
Grazed from Phys.org. Author: Editorial Staff.
Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Google have developed a novel approach that allows the massive infrastructure powering cloud computing to run more efficiently. The new approach can make these warehouse-scale computers run as much as 15 to 20 percent more efficiently. This novel model has already been applied at Google. Researchers presented their findings at the IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture conference Feb. 23 to 27 in China.
Computer scientists looked at a range of Google web services, including Gmail and search. They used a unique approach to develop their model. Their first step was to gather live data from Google’s warehouse-scale computers as they were running in real time. Their second step was to conduct experiments with data in a controlled environment on an isolated server. The two-step approach was key, said Lingjia Tang and Jason Mars, faculty members in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. "These problems can seem easy to solve when looking at just one server," said Mars. "But solutions do not scale up when you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of servers."…
The work is one example of the research Mars and Tang are pursuing at the Clarity Lab at the Jacobs School, their newly formed research group. Clarity is an acronym for Cross-Layer. Architecture and Runtimes. Mars will be presenting some of their work April 18 on the UC San Diego campus at the Jacobs School of Engineering’s Research Expo. "If we can bridge the current gap between hardware designs and the software stack and access this huge potential, it could improve the efficiency of web service companies and significantly reduce the energy footprint of these massive-scale data centers," Tang said…
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