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Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

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Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#21

Post by marcosdumay »

jiggawatts wrote: post #12

I guarantee that there will eventually be a vaguely similar (but different!) stack published by each of: NetFlix, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Just kidding, Apple won't publish anything. The IT ecosystem has fragmented into mutually incompatible cliques. You are either in the Google ecosystem, the Amazon ecosystem, or some other one, but there are no more truly open and industry-wide standards. Look at WebAuthN: it…

> Another random example is HTTP/3, which is basically the "What's best for Google" protocol.

HTTP/2 is that. The version 3 is... quite great, and not really originary from there.

And gRPC is some self-contained thing that doesn't bother anybody.

I do really agree with your point. But those examples are bad, and yet another non-standard cloud service isn't also a good example.

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#24

Post by networkchad »

rincebrain wrote: post #20
docandrew wrote: post #16

I was confused by the reference to “lossy” networks in this page. Does this have a different meaning in this context than something like lossy compression where data is actually discarded?

Ethernet, unlike, say, Infiniband, doesn't promise things will get where you sent them just because it didn't error initially, so other protocols handle this at higher levels to notice the failure cases.* For an example of what this means, try setting your MTU above the limit, and watch the raw traffic. * - it's been years since I cared about the formal definition, my apologies if I got it wrong.

You are correct in general. Lossy = no guarantee mechanism / state-based acceptance; it’s handled by a higher level proto (tcp).

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#25

Post by wmf »

smokefoot wrote: post #22

I don’t understand networking all that well. Is it interesting that the telcos and non-tech companies are moving away from specialized hardware toward software defined networks while the hyperscalers are using hardware acceleration?

"Software defined networks" doesn't mean anything. If you want to understand networking you have to strike it from your vocabulary.

It's possible for different vendors to be on different points on the wheel of reincarnation at the same time. https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/w/wor.htm

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#26

Post by bhawks »

tgma wrote: post #15
jiggawatts wrote: post #12

I guarantee that there will eventually be a vaguely similar (but different!) stack published by each of: NetFlix, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Just kidding, Apple won't publish anything. The IT ecosystem has fragmented into mutually incompatible cliques. You are either in the Google ecosystem, the Amazon ecosystem, or some other one, but there are no more truly open and industry-wide standards. Look at WebAuthN: it…

This is exaggerated to the point that I consider it fiction. BTW Google doesn't substantially use gRPC within their datacenters. The industry has always been this way. Back in the day there were many many processor ISAs that are now consolidated. There was been many networking standards that consolidated (IPX/SPX anyone?) New things often diverge because of new requirements not out of spite. There is a push and pull…

> This is exaggerated to the point that I consider it fiction. BTW Google doesn't substantially use gRPC within their datacenters.

For explicitness Google uses stubby which shares a lot of interface level commonality with gRPC but there's differences at a runtime level. Nobody is slinging json or soap around Google data centers.

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#27

Post by Brajeshwar »

jiggawatts wrote: post #12

I guarantee that there will eventually be a vaguely similar (but different!) stack published by each of: NetFlix, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Just kidding, Apple won't publish anything. The IT ecosystem has fragmented into mutually incompatible cliques. You are either in the Google ecosystem, the Amazon ecosystem, or some other one, but there are no more truly open and industry-wide standards. Look at WebAuthN: it…

I agree — the corporates have stop building and making `for` their users. They make their services so the users have no option but to get more and more comfortable in their ecosystem, and never get out.

Very soon, we will have providers/companies/champions/fighters that keep building the middleware transports to connect their behemoths.

Btw, someone somewhere popped up a better term — AGAMEMNON (Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Ebay, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Netflix)

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#28

Post by [deleted] »

jiggawatts wrote: post #12

I guarantee that there will eventually be a vaguely similar (but different!) stack published by each of: NetFlix, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Just kidding, Apple won't publish anything. The IT ecosystem has fragmented into mutually incompatible cliques. You are either in the Google ecosystem, the Amazon ecosystem, or some other one, but there are no more truly open and industry-wide standards. Look at WebAuthN: it…

[deleted]

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#29

Post by wmf »

jbotdev wrote: post #10

It sounds like this builds on top of Ethernet to provide a higher performance alternative to UDP/TCP, with some sort of hardware acceleration. I may be in over my head since I’m not an HPC/datacenter expert, but not sure I understand how you’d use this on the software side. Maybe someone is aware of specific examples? (beyond the vague “HPC/AI”) edit: as another comment mentioned, the diagram shows it’s on top of UDP…

From a software perspective you probably wouldn't see Falcon at all. You'd use, say, the RDMA verbs API and under the hood it's accelerated by Falcon.

Re: Google opens Falcon, a reliable low-latency hardware transport, to the ecosystem

#30

Post by unnouinceput »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #27
jiggawatts wrote: post #12

I guarantee that there will eventually be a vaguely similar (but different!) stack published by each of: NetFlix, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple. Just kidding, Apple won't publish anything. The IT ecosystem has fragmented into mutually incompatible cliques. You are either in the Google ecosystem, the Amazon ecosystem, or some other one, but there are no more truly open and industry-wide standards. Look at WebAuthN: it…

I agree — the corporates have stop building and making `for` their users. They make their services so the users have no option but to get more and more comfortable in their ecosystem, and never get out. Very soon, we will have providers/companies/champions/fighters that keep building the middleware transports to connect their behemoths. Btw, someone somewhere popped up a better term — AGAMEMNON (Apple, Google, Amazon…

OpenAi is Microsoft, so that term not really works.
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