Ultra Ethernet (UEC) is the hot new technology that supports today’s AI and HPC workloads. For AI, it is well understood that the expensive accelerators (GPUs) must be constantly supplied with data. In many cases data continues to reside on traditional storage networks which are not designed for the performance and scalability required for today’s HPC and AI workloads. These networks are expected to migrate to UEC for improved bandwidth, tail latency, and scale.
To improve access to the stored data, one clear optimization is to add storage directly to the UEC backend network. While this is an easy goal to state, the actual implementation has many challenges. In this BoF, UEC members and SNIA storage experts will facilitate a discussion about the challenges, potential solutions, and the appropriate way to intersect UEC and storage.