Descriptif

OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE:

The TPT20 course aims to outline the fundamental concepts, application domains and open research topics inherent to Cloud computing, both in large datacenters and in mobile edge environment. Mobile edge typically corresponds to the periphery of radio-cellular networks where both fix users, mobile users and IoT devices (sensors and actuators)  are interconnected in wireless to cooperate with remote computing units. These computing units are referred in the jarrgon as the Baseband Units (BBU). The emergence of 5G/6G telephony and of smart/autonomous vehicles is at the origin of the CLoud Radio Access Network (CRAN) standard. An originality of this course is to provide a sythnetic state of the art (SoA) in matter of harware/middleware/sofware confiigurations. Teaching an ATHENS session is challenging on two aspects: how to introduce a new scientific topic in a successive five days session, from electronic chips evolution to real-time Virtual Machines managment ? How to satisfy the expectations of an international audience with diverse scientific backgrounds and cultures? The added-value of the TPT20 curriculum is two-fold. First, it introduces some of the most significant and up-to-date evolutions of Cloud computing but also of Mobile Edge Computing, in terms of hardware architecture and service management. Secondly, it alternates didactic courses with lab sessions thanks to a collaboration with two leading edge actors of the domain, namely Nexedi and IBM. My colleagues Mr Steven Eychenne (Ing. @ IBM-France) and Mr Cédric LENINIVIN (Ing. @ Nexedi) both contribute to this challenging task.

In a first step, we propose a brief state of the art on CPU and hardware architectures. The performance criteria of a blade server (the basic computing unit within a datacenter) are analyzed (CPU speed, multithread vs. multicore, energy consumption etc.). We describe then into details the rationale of the typical 2D-fat-tree optical backplane network architecture of a datacenter. The pros and cons of this architecture are discussed in reference to the potentialities of all-optical technologies. The basic rationale of virtual machines (VM) assignment to physical machines (PM) and migration strategies is presented via bin packing theory. After these preliminary considerations, the evolution from hypervisors to Virtual Containers (VC) such as Kubernetes and Docker is briefly discussed. An original focus is dedicated to the impact of heat dissipation onto real-time VM migrations. In this perspective, we show how a Pareto optimization approach can be considered. We conclude this first section by a brief presentation of Cloud standardization bodies and the three Cloud business models considered up to now.

The second part of this course deals with the most innovative aspect of the Cloud domain, namely Cloud Radio Access Networks (CRAN) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). CRAN refers to the innovative access infrastructure that will enable to deport Cloud intelligence close to fix/mobile end-users, including IoT sensors/actuators. Autonomous vehicles (AV) and more extensively, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), the first two pillar applications of 5G, rely on Cloud and IoT. In this perspective, we depict into details the basic principles of Digital Radio-over-Fiber (D-RoF) and the two underlying standards, namely CPRI and OBSAI. In our conclusion, we depict the open perspectives offered by 5G/MEC for future intelligent transportation systems (ITS).