Alibaba Group has\nannounced a self-developed data traffic control mechanism named HPCC, standing\nfor High Precision Congestion Control. The technology will provide data\ntransmission with ultra-low latency, high bandwidth and high stability. This is\nan important milestone towards ultra-high-speed data centres that are vital to\nunlock the potential of AI and IoT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Researchers\nfrom Alibaba have proven through testbed experiments and large-scale\nsimulations that HPCC reacts faster to available bandwidth and congestion\ncompared with other alternatives, while maintaining close-to-zero queues. In\nthe simulations for under 50% traffic load, HPCC shortens flow completion times\nby up to 95%, causing little congestion even under large-scale incasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The paper discusses how the performance of modern data centre networks is essential to the service quality of cloud and that faster networking speed can significantly improve the experience of cloud users. Driven by the need for faster networks, the silicon industry has successfully increased the link speed in data centres from 1Gbps to 100Gbps in the past decade, a growth rate that continues to outpace Moore\u2019s Law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faster hardware\nalone is not sufficient to lead to ultra-high-speed networking in data centres.\nAn additional consideration is that a higher link speed can also be harmful to\nthe network stability, because congestion is more likely with faster senders\nwho are able to simultaneously transfer data on the network. Congestion is also\nharmful to the network latency experienced by applications because of queuing\ndelays and potential packet loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From years of\nexperience operating large-scale and high-speed RDMA networks, Alibaba reports\nseveral inherent limitations in the existing congestion control solutions\navailable including slow convergence, unavoidable packet queueing and\ncomplicated parameter tuning. The new HPCC is set to address this gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers found that the fundamental cause of such limitations in the existing solutions is the lack of fine-grained network load information in legacy networks. However, this status quo has recently altered with the availability of new In-band Network Telemetry (INT) features. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In particular, new switching ASICs are able to obtain fine-grained network load information and use this to provide a type of congestion control mechanism that can deliver a steady and ultra-high-speed network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alibaba\u2019s researchers have proposed HPCC as it has the potential to leverage INT to obtain link load information and controls traffic with high levels of precision. By addressing challenges such as delayed INT information during congestion or overreaction to INT information, HPCC can quickly utilise free bandwidth to avoid this issue and can maintain near-zero in-network queues for ultra-low latency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
HPCC has the added advantage of needing only three parameters to configure and is also easy to deploy in hardware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alibaba Group has announced a self-developed data traffic control mechanism named HPCC, standing for High Precision Congestion Control. The technology will provide data transmission with ultra-low latency, high bandwidth and high stability. This is an important milestone towards ultra-high-speed data centres that are vital to unlock the potential of AI and IoT. Researchers from Alibaba […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":33435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,140,93],"tags":[158,13276,112,2097,13277,13278,278],"class_list":["post-33254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-centres","category-networking","category-top-stories","tag-ai","tag-alibaba-group","tag-data-centre","tag-edge","tag-high-precision-congestion-control","tag-hpcc","tag-network"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33257,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33254\/revisions\/33257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}