PROP: Using PCIe-based RDMA to accelerate rack-scale communications in data centers

In order to reduce the demands on bandwidth of core layer network, data center operators usually assign tasks of the same job to servers that are located in the same rack, leading to the fact that 80% of the traffic originated from servers retains in the same rack. As a result, providing sufficient network capacity inside racks becomes critical to the Quality-of-Service of current data center applications. In this paper, we propose PROP, a novel hybrid network architecture which leverages PCIe-based RDMA to reinforce rack-scale connectivity in data centers. In our design, intra-rack bulk data transfers will be accelerated by a dedicated high-bandwidth PCIe-compliant network while complemented with the existing Ethernet network. In addition, we develop a proprietary PCIe-based RDMA hardware which can allow the servers in the same rack to exchange data in main memory without involving the operating system and the processors. We also implement a software stack to enable existing socket-based applications to transparently utilize the proposed dedicated network system. As the preliminary stage, this paper focuses on exploiting the unique design point and implements an FPGA-based prototype to validate the technical feasibility of the proposed architecture.