Towards a Composable Computer System

Abstract

The recent advancement of technology in both software and hardware enables us to revisit the concept of the composable architecture in the system design. The composable system design provides flexibility to serve a variety of workloads. The system offers a dynamic co-design platform that allows experiments and measurements in a controlled environment. This speeds up the system design and software evolution. It also decouples the lifecycles of components. The design consideration includes adopting available technology with the understanding of application characteristics. With the flexibility, we show the design has the potential to be the infrastructure of both cloud computing and HPC architecture serving a variety of workloads.