MIT News

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed Fastpass, a network-management system that could reduce the average queue length of routers in a Facebook datacenter by 99.6 percent. Fastpass relies on a central server called an "arbiter" to decide which nodes in the network can send data to which others during a certain period of time. A node that wants to transmit data issues a request to the arbiter and receives a routing assignment. The researchers found that an arbiter with eight cores can keep up with a network transmitting 2.2 terabits of data per second. Fastpass relies on a method for dividing the task of assigning transmission times so it can be performed in parallel on separate cores. To read further, please visit http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/no-wait-data-centers-0717.