Time-domain approach to energy efficiency in high-performance network element design

Abstract: Energy efficiency is a corner stone of sustainability in data center and high-performance networking. However, at present there is a notable structural mismatch between network silicon development targets and network equipment utilization patterns in the field. In particular, some aspects of network energy utilization (eg load-proportional energy consumption) routinely stay out of focus during system design and implementation. Drawing from hands-on research and development in high-speed and grid networking, we identify a novel approach to energy efficiency in network engineering. In this paper, we demonstrate how the problem of efficient network system design can be dissected into smaller sections based on timescales of traffic processing. The newly proposed approach allows R&D efforts to be tightly paired to resources and sustainability targets to improve energy efficiency in many classes of network and telecom devices.