Composable Computing Opportunities and Challenges

The recent advancement of technology in both software and hardware enables the concept of the composable system design. A composable system provides flexibility to serve a variety of workloads by means of a software defined infrastructure based on hardware disaggregated over a network fabric. The system offers a dynamic co-design platform that allows experiments and measurements in a controlled environment. This new paradigm targets eliminating unused (jailed) hardware in a computing system and decouples the life cycle of components (e.g., CPU vs memory). In addition, a composable system is helpful for accelerating the adoption of new hardware in software applications as new devices can be simply plugged into an existing system. In this panel discussion, we will discuss the pros/cons of composable systems, and considerations when applying this design for data centers to accommodate a variety of workloads