The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Cloud technology is a dynamic and innovative field, which brings with it many changes in the way we perform large-scale computing, supply and consume data, and manage our data online. Recently, Cloud technology has begun to show it's impact on the manner in which Service Providers (SPs) manage their networks. Today's leading SPs have recThe NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) is composed mainly of standard IT servers and Network elements, such as routers and switches. However, some Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) may require some form of HW acceleration to be provided by the NFVI to meet their performance goals. While the standard IT based NFV architecture meets the performance goals of many virtualization use cases, some use cases are more challenging and require Network-Intensive (NI) or Compute- Intensive (CI) processing.

A unified approach and standard interfaces are proposed to allow multiple HWAs solutions to co-exist within the same NFVI and to enable VNF usage of HWA resources. Moreover, this approach will allow orchestration VNFs to HWA technologies for acceleration based on various metrics, such as resource availability and/or utilization. This is essential in order for the VNFs to meet portability requirements. As the VNFs being accelerated depend on and use application programmable interfaces (APIs), in the absence of a common HWA Abstraction Layer (HAL), the VNFs must be hard coded to the specific API utilized by the associated HWA. Unified handling and Abstraction of Hardware Accelerators will facilitate total separation in selection of NFVI and VNF providers. A service provider will be free to choose optimal NFVI components and architecture based on its commercial and functionality requirements without having to identify and select the VNFs and services that will be deployed over the infrastructure a-priori. ently announced their goal to move towards Network Function Virtualization (NFV), a major shift which means moving their services onto a large, self-managed distributed Cloud. This move will require major changes in today's networks, both in terms of how the network functions are developed and deployed, as well as the overall management of the network.

Bio: Zvika Bronstein is the CTO of Future Networks in Toga Networks,responsible for NFV strategy. Since the beginning of NFV standardization efforts, as part of the European Research Center, Zvika represented Huawei in ETSI NFV ISG (industry Standardization Group). Zvika focus in NFV included Use Cases, Performance Proof-Of-Concepts and Hardware Acceleration and Abstraction. Before this current position, Zvika held various positions leading development projects in CPU and Data networking. His roles included leading the RD organization of 3Com in Israel and founding Atrica - a pioneer of Metro-Ethernet. Prior to that Zvika held some development positions in the Silicon Valley in HP and Daisy systems. Part of Zvika's development work included the first Microprocessor research project in the Technion, early RISC development, and early Switches and routers. Zvika earned a Master of Science degree from Stanford University.