Paper Title: Extending DPUs to Enable Software-Defined I/O (SDIO)

Paper Abstract: Software-defined I/O (SDIO) merges memory and storage in an effort to get full benefit from today's wide range of memory technologies and interconnects. It improves memory usage without demanding extra work from programmers, thus increasing TCO at the system level. Applications thus see the full advantage of such advances as SSDs, persistent memory, NVMe-oF, RoCE, and DRAM connected via the emerging CXL interface. Adding support for a flat memory hierarchy to DPUs can make them even more valuable in today's data-driven world. An on-board SDIO controller provides the required hardware, avoiding the need for an external unit. Future Arm cores can readily offer such features.

Paper Author: Dhaval Parikh, Head Hyperscale, Arm

Author Bio: Kshitij Sudan is Director of the Storage and Acceleration Segment at Arm, where he leads solution strategy and business development. He was previously a Staff Engineer and Design Solutions Architect at Arm, and a Performance Architect at Samsung Electronics. He has a strong background in SoC design, storage, Arm servers, and DRAM. He has published several conference presentations, including ones at the important HPCA (High-Performance Computer Architecture) and ASPLOS (Architectural Support for Programming Language and Architectures) events, and a paper in the IEEE Transaction on Computers. He earned a PhD in Computer Architecture from the University of Utah and holds two patents in memory system architecture.