Software Networks, 2nd Edition

16Concretization and Morphware Networks

Virtualization requires a software version of the infrastructure. This solution is a paradigm in which the network environment is made of datacenters. These datacenters are more or less big and support the virtual machines. This solution is excellent for agility and flexibility of the network, but it is very bad from a performance and energy saving point of view. A good solution for all these constraints is concretization.

Concretization is the reverse of virtualization: the question becomes one of how to make the move from software to hardware but preserve the same degree of agility as software. In other words, the idea of concretization is to replace the software with hardware that is instantaneously reconfigurable, so that the software executed on the reconfigurable processor can instantly be replaced by different software on reconfigured hardware. Figure 16.1 illustrates the relationship between the processes of concretization and virtualization.

However, the initial microprocessor-like equipment which is virtualized has nothing to do with the equipment obtained after concretization. If the initial equipment is, for example, a router, the post-concretization equipment is a routing software executed on a reconfigurable processor. Concretization takes the shape of an equipment which is almost instantaneously reconfigurable. The goal of this solution is to speed up the execution of software obtained after virtualization and to consume ...