Can OS Specialization give new life to old carbon in the cloud?
Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Is there "fat" (overheads) in cloud computing infrastructure software that can be trimmed? Would doing so help ameliorate the need for frequent hardware refreshes and extend the life of existing hardware? In this paper, we demonstrate that, indeed, there is "fat" that can be trimmed by using specialized OS-based software stacks. Doing so can allow decade-old computers to be used for critical cloud infrastructure services, potentially yielding 3x improvements in efficiency compared to standard software stacks on newer hardware. The implications of these results raise the possibility of exploiting OS optimizations to reduce server hardware obsolescence. Further, it suggests the importance of addressing the key portability challenges of specialized OS stacks.
Authors: Han Dong, Sanjay Arora, Orran Krieger, Jonathan Appavoo
Institution: Boston University
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4402805769