Shoal: A Network Architecture for Disaggregated Racks

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" summary

Shoal presents a rack fabric built from nanosecond circuit switches and a fully decentralized, traffic‑agnostic static cyclic schedule that forces every node to connect to every other node once per epoch. Implementation uses custom FPGA NICs and a circuit switch prototype that can 6.4 nanoseconds reconfigure, validated on an 8-node FPGA testbed and packet‑level simulation. Claims include bounded per‑destination queues, worst‑case 50% throughput loss compensated by extra bandwidth, and about 71% lower power than packet‑switched designs.

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" chapters (15)

1. 0:00Intro
2. 0:27Traditional racks in datacenters
3. 0:58Disaggregated racks in datacenters
4. 1:41Challenges for disaggregated rack network
5. 3:02Potential disaggregated rack network designs
6. 5:00Goal 1: Low power consumption
7. 5:45Goal 2: High network performance
8. 7:31Shoal for a single circuit switch network
9. 11:45Extending Shoal to a network of circuit switches
10. 13:03Congestion in Shoal
11. 14:07Congestion control in Shoal
12. 16:22Key properties of Shoal No central controller for reconfiguration
13. 17:20Implementation
14. 17:54Evaluation
15. 19:54Conclusion

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