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Multicore CPU designs offer significant performance benefits when they are deployed in asymmetrical multiprocessing (AMP) applications. Using AMP some tasks are bound to specific cores for processing, thus freeing other cores from overhead functions. That is how I see the future of networking. Networks will be multicore designs in which some cores (i.e. network capacity) will be orchestrated for HPC, priority applications and storage, while other cores will address the needs of more mundane applications on the network.

The future of the network is not more abstraction layers, interconnect protocols, protocols wrapped in protocols and riding the curve of Moore’s Law to build bigger cores and broader bases. That was the switching era. The new era is about multicore networking. We have pretty much proven that multicore processing in CPU design is an excellent evolution. Why do we not have multicore networking? Why buy a single core network design and use all shorts of patches, tools, gum, paperclips, duct tape and widgets to jam all sorts of different applications through it? I think applications and workload clusters should have their own network cores. There could be many network cores. In fact, cores could be dynamic. Some would be narrow at the base, but have high amounts of bisectional bandwidth. Some cores would be broad at the base, but have low bisectional bandwidth. Cores can change; cores can adapt.