Modular Microserver DataCentre (M2DC) investigates, develops and demonstrates a modular, highly-efficient, cost-optimized server architecture composed of heterogeneous microserver computing resources, being able to be tailored to meet requirements from various application domains such as image processing, cloud computing or even HPC.
To achieve this objective, M2DC is built on three main pillars:
[Pillar 1] A flexible server architecture that can be easily customised, maintained and updated so as to enable adaptation of the data centre. This architecture will be optimized with respect to the integration of computing resources with constrained thermal power dissipation such as embedded CPUs and GPUs, FPGAs, manycore processors, while also being able to integrate more powerful resources if needed. Built on established standards such as COM Express, the server architecture will enable the integration of third-party boards and chips, leading to what can be called an open server architecture. Particular attention will be put on maintainability and reliability by design, relying for example on computing resource hot plug management and redundancy of power supplies.
[Pillar 2] Advanced management strategies [Pillar 2a] and system efficiency enhancements (SEE) [Pillar 2b]. In order to improve the behaviour of the system during runtime and to meet requirements from the various applications, the server architecture will include built-in enhancements (e.g., for computing acceleration, enhancements of the global efficiency thanks to data management, dependability and security, behaviour monitoring, etc.) on system level. High power efficiency will be provided by an intelligent power management enabling to constantly optimize the power consumption of the system thanks to proactive and reactive strategies.
[Pillar 3] Well-defined interfaces to surrounding software ecosystem will allow for an easy integration into existing data centre management solutions through the use of the latest middleware software for resource management, provisioning, etc. Building on the Linux operating system (e.g., Linaro for ARM-based compute modules) and other well-known software infrastructures, M2DC will also feature optimized runtime software implementations when needed for improving the efficiency of the system towards application domains such as cloud computing, big data analytics and HPC applications.
The results of these three pillars will be combined to produce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)-optimized appliances, deployed in a real data centre environment and seamlessly interacting with existing infrastructure to run real-life applications.