Adaptable Switch: A Heterogeneous Switch Architecture for Network-Centric Computing

Network-centric computing offloads and disaggregates computing and data processing from CPU to network in order to support growing throughput, big data volume, and information complexity in data centers. An emerging paradigm is employing SmartNIC for network-centric computing, which introduces user-specific processing at a host's network interface. In this article, we take this initiative further to tackle current proprietary processing and computing issues in the network core: the switches. We propose a new hardware architecture called adaptable switch. Based on testing of its prototype empowering three use cases, we demonstrate that both high throughput and processing flexibility can be achieved simultaneously on an adaptable switch.