In-network computing via smart networking devices is a recent trend in modern datacenter networks. State-of-the-art switches with near line-rate computing and aggregation capabilities enable acceleration and improved resource utilization for modern applications like large-scale distributed and federated machine learning, as well as big data analytics. We study the problem of activating a limited number of in-network computing devices within a network, aiming at reducing the overall cost incurred by such a deployment. Such limitations on the number of in-network computing elements arise, e.g., in incremental upgrades of network infrastructure, and are also due to requiring specialized middleboxes, or FPGAs, for supporting heterogeneous workloads, and multiple tenants. We present an efficient optimal algorithm for placing such devices in tree networks with arbitrary link rates, and further evaluate its performance in various scenarios and for various tasks, including federated/distributed ML and big data analytics. Our results show that even a small fraction of network devices supporting in-network aggregation leads to a significant reduction in network utilization cost. Furthermore, we show that various intuitive strategies for performing such placements are significantly inferior compared with our solution, for varying workloads, tasks, and link rates.

Distributed computing has become a common practice nowadays, where recent focus has been given to the usage of smart networking devices with in-network computing capabilities. State-of-the-art switches with near-line rate computing and aggregation capabilities enable acceleration and improved performance for various modern applications like big data analytics and large-scale distributed and federated machine learning.In this work, we formulate and study the theoretical algorithmic foundations of such approaches, and focus on how to deploy and use constrained in-network computing capabilities within the data center. We focus our attention on reducing the network congestion, i.e., the most congested link in the network, while supporting the given workload(s). We present an efficient optimal algorithm for tree-like network topologies and show that our solution provides as much as an x13 improvement over common alternative approaches. In particular, our results show that having merely a small fraction of network devices that support in-network aggregation can significantly reduce the network congestion, both for single and multiple workloads.

In-network computing via smart networking devices is a recent trend for modern datacenter networks. State-of-the-art switches with near line rate computing and aggregation capabilities are developed to enable, e.g., acceleration and better utilization for modern applications like big data analytics, and large scale distributed and federated machine learning. We formulate and study the problem of activating a limited number of in-network computing devices within a network, aiming at reducing the overall network utilization for a given workload. Such limitations on the number of in-network computing elements per workload arise, e.g., in incremental upgrades of network infrastructure, and are also due to requiring specialized middleboxes, or FPGAs, that should support heterogeneous workloads, and multiple tenants.