香港六合彩

ICCS member 鈥疍r George Zervas, 鈥痜rom the Optical Networks Group (ONG), 鈥痟as been awarded a 鈥痜ellowship of 拢1.1 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to design and build data centres of the future.鈥�听

The work, which will take place听in 香港六合彩鈥檚 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, will鈥� leverage 鈥痶he 鈥痠ncreased 鈥痭etwork performance and energy efficiency enabled by鈥� using 鈥痮ptically 鈥痵witched 鈥痠nterconnects 鈥痺ithin data鈥痗entres.鈥�鈥�

From transport to entertainment, we rely on data centres to support鈥痑lmost every aspect of our daily lives, but existing technology is reaching its limit to鈥痬anage鈥痮ur constant and鈥痝rowing demand for information and data.鈥�鈥�听

Currently, all data centres are built on electronic networks which have so far been able to keep pace with exponential data growth because of Moore鈥檚 Law, the historical tendency of听electronic circuits to double their transmission speed every two years or so at no extra power or cost. However, this trend is slowing down as existing technologies to make components smaller and faster are reaching their limits, and the performance of data听centre听systems is suffering听as a consequence.听听

George鈥檚 鈥極ptoCloud鈥� EPSRC Fellowship aims to design and build next generation scalable and sustainable data centres by replacing electronic networks with optical fibre systems. Optical technologies and compute-network-technology co-design have the potential to massively improve network and computational performance, generating data centres that are much more efficient than current technology permits. Optical fibre-based data centres also consume less energy compared to electronic systems, making them more sustainable and cost-effective too.听听

George Zervas, EPSRC Fellow, said

鈥淒ata Centres in any form, location and size are the 鈥榚ngine rooms鈥� of the digital infrastructure. Moore鈥檚 Law is coming to an end and OptoCloud aims to transform Data Centres by developing scalable, efficient and ultra-fast optical technologies. Crucially, it will explore the co-design of and dependencies between technologies/devices, network, compute and large-scale systems to deliver transformative systems.

This is a multi-disciplinary challenge across physics, engineering and computer science and I鈥檓 looking forward to working听with my highly talented research team at 香港六合彩 together with the outstanding group of industrial and academic partners.鈥澨�听

To date,听advancements and research has focused on long-standing switching principles. These principals fundamentally suffer from complexities that mean to make magnitudinal improvements will need new approaches to network architecture and the step change that optical integration will bring.听听

OptoCloud will explore鈥痶he鈥痜undamental challenges of optical data鈥痗entres, including optical switching, highly efficient interconnects, network topologies, ultra-fast joint design and control of network and听compute resources, while evaluating developed鈥� technologies based on industrial use cases.鈥�

The project鈥痺ill begin鈥痠n鈥疢arch 2021, and over the next鈥痜ew鈥痽ears George will work alongside鈥疨hD鈥痵tudents, post-doctoral researchers, industry partners and universities,鈥痶hat also contributed听拢1 million,鈥痶o achieve the鈥痝oals鈥痮f the fellowship.鈥�

Best of luck to George and the wider team!

Project partners

The Opto-Cloud project will be carried our in collaboration with the following partners:

Microsoft鈥疪esearch Cambridge听
Xilinx听
Sumitomo Electric听
Finisar听
Columbia University听
National Technical University of Athens听

Links

Discover more about the pioneering research George will be leading in the two articles below.
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Dr George Zervas听
Opto-Cloud Research Project听
Optical Networks Group听
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering 听
Institute of Communications and Connected Systems听

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