Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. Tilmann Rabl
 

Lin Wang

Affiliation: Uni Paderborn
Title: When the Network Becomes the Computer

 

Abstract

The ever-increasing programmability of the network has not only enabled unprecedented innovation in networking but also given rise to a new paradigm called in-network computing. By accelerating specific computations on the path between data sources and sinks, in-network computing has shown clear performance benefits for a variety of distributed systems concerns as well as for high-level application components (e.g., for machine learning and scientific computing). However, in-network computing complicates system design, calling for new abstractions and mechanisms. In this talk, I will focus on a fundamental question: How to make in-network computing more accessible? My answer is NetCL---a unified programming system for in-network computing. In-network computing challenges our traditional wisdom in distributed systems, leaving significant future work related to management flexibility, resource elasticity, and security.

Short CV

Lin Wang is currently a Full Professor, leading the Computer Networks group at Paderborn University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2015. Before joining Paderborn University, he was an Assistant Professor (tenured) in the Computer Systems group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and held positions at TU Darmstadt, SnT Luxembourg, and IMDEA Networks Institute. He is interested in networked systems with specific topics including data center in-network acceleration and edge/cloud systems for machine learning. He received a Google Research Scholar Award in 2022, an Outstanding Paper Award from RTSS 2022, among several other best paper awards.