Not so very long ago, distributed computing meant clustering together a bunch of cheap X86 servers and equipping them with some form of middleware tha

Enfabrica Takes On Hyperdistributed I/O Bottlenecks

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2021-06-25 00:30:06

Not so very long ago, distributed computing meant clustering together a bunch of cheap X86 servers and equipping them with some form of middleware that allowed for work to be distributed across hundreds to thousands to sometimes tens of thousands of nodes. Such scale-out approaches, which added complexity to the software stack, were necessary because normal SMP and NUMA scale up techniques, with very tightly coupled compute and shared memory across a dozen or two nodes, simply could not stretch any further.

These distributed systems, which were difficult enough to build, are child’s play compared to what we at The Next Platform are starting to call “hyperdistributed systems,” which are evolving as disaggregation and composability have entered the imagination of system architects at the same time as a wider and wider variety of compute, memory, storage, and networking components are available – and are expected to be used in flexible rather than static ways.

The problem, say the co-founders of a stealth-mode startup called Enfabrica, is that this new hyperdistributed architecture has more bottlenecks than a well-stocked bar. And they say they have developed a combination of silicon, system hardware, and software that will create a new I/O architecture that better suits hyperdistributed systems. Enfabrica is not uncloaking from stealth mode just yet, but the company’s founders reached out to us as they were securing their first round of funding – $50 million from Sutter Hill Ventures – and wanted to elaborate the problems they see in modern distributed systems before they eventually disclose how they have solved those problems.

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