Fujitsu Develops WAN Acceleration Technology Utilizing FPGA Accelerators
2017年12月11日 - 3:56PM
JCN Newswire (英)
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of WAN
acceleration technology that can deliver transfer speeds up to
40Gbps for migration of large volumes of data between clouds, using
servers equipped with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
Connections in wide area networks (WANs) between clouds are moving
from 1Gbps lines to 10Gbps lines, but with the recent advance of
digital technology, including IoT and AI, there is an even greater
demand for faster high-speed data transfers as huge volumes of data
are collected in the cloud. Until now the effective transfer speed
of WAN connections has been raised using techniques to reduce the
volume of data, such as compression and deduplication. However,
with WAN lines of 10Gbps there are enormous volumes of data to be
processed, and existing WAN acceleration technologies usable in
cloud servers have not been able to sufficiently raise the
effective transfer rate.
Fujitsu Laboratories has now developed WAN acceleration technology
capable of real-time operation even with speeds of 10Gbps or
higher. WAN acceleration technology is achieved with a dedicated
computational unit specialized for a variety of processing, such as
feature value calculations and compression processing, mounted onto
an FPGA equipped on a server, and in tandem with this, by enabling
highly parallel operation of the computational units by supplying
data at the appropriate times based on the predicted completion of
each computation.
In a test environment where this technology was deployed on servers
that use FPGAs, and where the servers were connected with 10Gbps
lines, Fujitsu Laboratories confirmed that this technology achieved
effective transfer rates of up to 40Gbps, the highest performance
in the industry. With this technology, it has become possible to
transfer data at high-speeds between clouds, including data sharing
and backups, enabling the creation of next-generation cloud
services that share and utilize large volumes of data across a
variety of companies and locations.
Fujitsu Laboratories aims to deploy this technology, capable of use
in cloud environments, as an application loaded on an FPGA-equipped
server. It is continuing evaluations in practical environments with
the goal of commercializing this technology during fiscal 2018.
Fujitsu Laboratories will announce details of this technology at
the 2017 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology
(FPT 2017), an international conference to be held in Melbourne,
Australia on December 11-13.
Development Background
As the cloud has grown in recent years, there has been a movement
to increase data and server management and maintenance efficiency
by migrating data (i.e., internal documents, design data, and
email) that had been managed on internal servers to the cloud. In
addition, as shown by the spread in the use of digital technology
such as IoT and AI, there are high expectations for the ways that
work and business will be transformed by the analysis and use of
large volumes of data, including camera images from factories and
other on-site locations, and log data from devices. Given this,
there has been explosive growth in the volume of data passing
through WAN lines between clouds, spurring a need for
next-generation WAN acceleration technology capable of huge data
transfers at high-speed between clouds.
http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_Fujitsu121117WANFig1.jpg
Figure 1 : Use of WAN acceleration technology in a cloud
environment
Issues
WAN acceleration technologies improve effective transfer speeds by
reducing the volume of data through compression or deduplication of
the data to be transferred. When transferring data at even higher
speeds using 10Gbps network lines, the volume of data needing to be
processed is so great that the compression and deduplication
processing speed in the server bottlenecks. Therefore, in order to
improve real-time operation, there is a need for either CPUs that
can operate at higher speeds, or for WAN acceleration technology
with faster processing speeds.
About the Newly Developed Technology
Fujitsu Laboratories has now developed WAN acceleration technology
that can achieve real-time operation usable in the cloud even with
speeds of 10Gbps or more, using server-mounted FPGAs as
accelerators. Efficient operations with WAN acceleration technology
are accomplished by using an FPGA to process a portion of the
processing for which the computation is heavy and for which it is
difficult to improve processing speed in the CPU, when performing
compression or deduplication for WAN acceleration processing, and
by efficiently connecting the CPU with the FPGA accelerator.
Details of the technology are as follows.
1. FPGA parallelization technology using highly parallel dedicated
computational units
Fujitsu Laboratories has developed FPGA parallelization technology
that can significantly reduce the processing time required for data
compression and deduplication by deploying dedicated computational
units specialized for data partitioning, feature value calculation,
and lossless compression processing in a FPGA in a highly parallel
configuration, and by enabling highly parallel operation of the
computational units by delivering data at the appropriate times
based on predictions of the completion of each calculation.
http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_Fujitsu121117WANFig2.jpg
Figure 2 : Implementation of WAN acceleration processing using
server equipped with FPGA
2. Technology to optimize the flow of processing between CPU and
FPGA
Previously, in determining whether to apply lossless compression to
data based on the identification of duplication in that data, it
was necessary to read the data twice, both before and after the
duplication identification was executed on the FPGA, increasing
overhead and preventing the system from delivering sufficient
performance. Now, by consolidating the processing handoff onto the
FPGA, handling both the preprocessing for duplication
identification and the compression processing on the FPGA, and
using a processing sequence that controls how the compression
processing results are reflected on the CPU based on the results of
the duplication identification, this technology reduces the
overhead between the CPU and FPGA from reloading the input data and
from control exchanges. This reduces the waiting time due to the
handoff of data and control between the CPU and FPGA, delivering
efficient coordinated operation of the CPU and FPGA
accelerator.
http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_Fujitsu121117WANFig3.jpg
Figure 3 : Summary of the method for reducing overhead between CPU
and FPGA
Effects
Fujitsu Laboratories deployed this newly developed technology in
servers installed with FPGAs, confirming acceleration approximately
thirty times the performance of CPU processing alone. Fujitsu
Laboratories evaluated the transfer speed for a high volume of data
in a test environment where the servers were connected with 10Gbps
connections, and in a test simulating the regular backup of data,
including documents and video, confirmed that this technology
achieved transfer speeds up to 40Gbps, an industry record. This
technology has significantly improved data transfer efficiency over
WAN connections, enabling high-speed data transfers between clouds,
such as data sharing and backups, making possible the creation of
next-generation cloud services that share and use large volumes of
data between a variety of companies and locations.
http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_Fujitsu121117WANFig4.jpg
Figure 4 : Sample evaluation results using trial data
Future Plans
Fujitsu Laboratories will continue to evaluate this technology in
practical environments, deploying this technology in virtual
appliances that can be used in cloud environments. Fujitsu
Laboratories aims to make this technology available as a product of
Fujitsu Limited during fiscal 2018.
About Fujitsu Laboratories
Founded in 1968 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited,
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. is one of the premier research centers in
the world. With a global network of laboratories in Japan, China,
the United States and Europe, the organization conducts a wide
range of basic and applied research in the areas of Next-generation
Services, Computer Servers, Networks, Electronic Devices and
Advanced Materials. For more information, please see:
http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/labs/en/.
About Fujitsu Ltd
Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication
technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology
products, solutions, and services. Approximately 155,000 Fujitsu
people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our
experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with
our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated
revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year
ended March 31, 2017. For more information, please see
http://www.fujitsu.com.
* Please see this press release, with images, at:
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/
Source: Fujitsu Ltd
Contact:
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.
Computer Systems Laboratory
E-mail: wanopt_pr@ml.labs.fujitsu.com
Fujitsu Limited
Public and Investor Relations
Tel: +81-3-3215-5259
URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/
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