AusNOG 2024

A bit late to review, but some interesting talks. Agenda.

Arista: Practical AI Networking Innovations:

rail optimized
all reduce

low entropy, 2-3 flows per nic, elephant, bursty

JCT job completion time
TSN time spent networking

overprovisioning 1:1.2

Nokia: NUTS python network testing:

It looks quite nice, it is based on pytest and nornir/napalm. It looks similar to batfish?

Measuring Starlink:

High jitter, each 15sec change satellite -> micro-loss. BBR (non-loss sensitive) is the best flow protocol protocol with Starlink. ECN.

A Dangerous Fortune

I read this book a second time without realising. The first time was several years ago, I think it was one of first English books bough in paper. The second time was a cheap deal at 99p for the ebook.

And, I enjoyed it. The thrill, the twists, really engaging. It reminds to “The Pillars of the Earth” It is funny how this reminds me to all the bank crashes we had in 2008/9 and even last year in Silicon Valley. We don’t learn.

Taxtopia

This book showed me how screw up we are with the tax system, because it doesn’t apply to all. It is overcomplicated, and it you make a mistake, you pay dearly.

I think it is quite radical but at the beginning, the book gives a very radical example of a the tax system as a way to slow down inflation…. because governments have the printing money machine.

One important question is how you define a “company”. It has all the features as a person, it can buy/sell things, sue/be sued, but it is controlled but different people that are putting the money.

At the end, the author suggest to only tax people, remove all other taxes, you only pay if you get wealthier… but still dont fully understand how that could stop “rich”and companies not paying taxes. At the end of the day, all main governments are keeping all the tax heaven places so we are not going anywhere. Is blockchain a solution?

Different ways to pay less taxes is to borrow on your wealth and set up a trust… high level looks fine but can this be done by a “normal” person?

Some recommendations: blog, book

Photonics in Computing, Usb cable hack, Stutz, Building AI Networks Arista

Lightmatter: Based on this video, they are using photonics to connect chips, looks interesting, I remember Google has something with optical but for networking. But It is pretty clear this is not photonics computing.

Hacking USB cable: impressive, and expensive 🙂

Phil Stutz: Interesting conversation. But somehow, I am still looking for that thing that unlocks me…. can’t find it for the life of me….

Building AI Networks Arista:

- allreduce: collect elements from all nodes, apply a reduction operator(eg sum) then distribute reduction to all nodes
-allgather: collect elements from all nodes, and distribute the to all other nodes
- gpu: cpu for parallelization
- RDMA: RoCE2 GPU memory to GPU memory - origin in IB
- issues: flow collision, trafic polarization. low entropy!!! > dificult to ecmp => Dynamic LB
incast: many2one -> ECN + buffering (in spine!)
- use chassis!

With an operations hat on, dealing with chassis is expensive and no efficient. It kind of a vendor lock-in. AWS is all in pizza boxes and I remember one presentation in Cisco Live where the Cisco EVPN authority recommended pizza boxes.

Natural Born Heroes

After reading “After Born To Run”, I decided to buy another of the author’s book. Somehow I had low expectations… I read a bit the intro but somehow it has been beyond what I expected. It mixed history from Ancient Greece, World War II, fitness, nutrition, psychology, philosophy etc. It is a weird cocktel but it worked great!

It is quite brilliant how he tries to mix the fiction of classic Homer‘s Iliad with real facts and personal traits. And how Crete is the origin of all Greece history and heroes, and therefore Western Culture. As well, I never imagined Crete was so important during the WWII as it seems it delayed the invasion of Russia and then doomed the Germans. At the end of the day, the book is about the kidnapping of a Nazi general in Crete. And it is actually an Odyssey. I didnt about Churchill Dirty Tricks and all the characters involved. You dont need to born Rambo to be a war hero. Just check Paddy’s and Xan‘s.

Regarding fitness, he mentions the Fascia Lata and Fat-As-Fuel concepts. Mark Allen is mentioned one of the greatest triathlete that I didnt know and as a curiosity, he had a splash when he discovered the concept of Fat-As-Fuel concept (a.k.a Paleo diet). And the training and fat-as-fuel is mentioned from Phill Maffetone (and it seems he has a very interesting life)

He has a big go against Gym culture (Arnold Schwarzenegger being a target) as it destroyed what humans have done for millennia: natural movement. And the closest to that is parkour . It gives a good history lesson about the origin of Parkour and its figures like Georges Hebert. As well, the author has a go to the Gatorade-link industrie and hydration wasn’t really a problem in long distance running.

Regarding Fascia training he mentions Steve Maxwell (link1, video)

In general, very interesting and entertaining book with a wide range of topics!

Potato Pizza, TCP Conversation Completeness, IBM power10, AI developer kit, 2 not 3

This is a pizza that I tried several years ago, and it seems the restaurant is out of business. I have done some pizzas trying to emulate it but never matching that memory. So this is a placeholder to try:

Original Ingredients: Bechamel, Smoked Mozzarella, red onions, pancetta, sliced potatoes, and Buffalo Mozzarella.

Some example1, example2

This a old for today’s news. IBM Power10 Memory network but looks interesting:

...thanks to the coherence IBM already has across NVLink (which is really BlueLink running a slightly different protocol that makes the GPUs think DRAM is really slow but really fat HBM2, in effect, and also makes the CPUs think the HBM2 on the GPUs is really skinny but really fast DRAM).

Checking some wireshark traces last week, I cam across the concept of TCP Conversation Completeness. This was totally new for me. This video gave some idea too. This was useful for me for finding TCP conversation that showed retransmissions when trying to stablish the TCP handshake, and not just showing the retransmission, so I used “tcp.completeness<33” so I should see TCP flows with a sync + RST.

AI developer Kit by NVIDIA: This card looks nice, I would mind to buy it and give a chance to learn, but it is sold out everywhere…. This is a video about it.

2 not 3 (make a choice!):

Quantum AI Chip, InfraHub, python UV, SR controller, Kobe Bryant, Hell

Google Quantum AI: This looks remarkable.

python vu: replacement for pip, pyenv, etc. Need to try

InfraHub: As a network engineer interested in Automation. This looks interesting and I would like to go deeper to fully understand as it is the merge of the typical source of truth (DB) that you can’t get in git.

Segment Routing Controller: This is another thing I played with some years ago, but never found a controller to make TE. I dont see clearly this software is OSS but at least doesnt look like is a vendor-lock…

Kobe Bryant: venting, and it is ok.

Jordan B Peterson: Hell

AWS re:Invent 2024, Oracle Cloud AI, GenCast, videos

AWS re:Invent 2024 – Monday Night:

  • Graviton evolution: ARM based chip for EC2. 50% new capacity of last 2y is Graviton.
  • Nitron Cards: security chip too.
  • AES Trainium2: min 47. 2xHead per rack and then accelerators, and switch. Trainnium != CPU|GPU. And this is a great analysis about Trainium2
  • Neurnlink: min 60, I guess this is the equivalent of NVLink, etc
  • Ultraserver, quite beefy pic, min 61.
  • Networking: min 73: 10p10u is a fabric = 10petabits under 10micro latency.
  • Cabling proprietary trunk connector 16:1 fiber. min 77. I pretty use i have used pig-tails some years ago, so not sure why this is new?
  • Firefly optic plug: loopback testing. This is interesting for DC operations. Min 78.
  • AWS design their own optics, reduced failure
  • Network topology: Min 81, new protocol SIDR – Scalable Intent Driven Routing. <1s reconvergence. not centralized.
  • And this is a better summary than mine.

AWS re:Invent 2024 – NET201: The only interesting thing is minute 29 with the usage of hollow core fiber, to improve latency. I assume it is used in very specific parts of the network, looks a bit fragile. Elastic Fabric Adapter, not really good explanation what it is, where doest it run: network, server, nic? but it seems important. Looks like SIDR?

AWS re:Invent 2024 – NET403: I think 401 and 402 were more interesting. There were repeated things from the two other talks. Still worth watching and hopefully there is a new one in 2025.

Oracle Cloud Infra – AI: First time I visit the OCI page about their AI infra.

GenCast: weather predict by Google Mind. Not sure until what point, this can be used by anybody? And how much hardware you need to run it?

we’ve made GenCast an open model and released its code and weights, as we did for our deterministic medium-range global weather forecasting model.

Videos:

510km nonstop – Ross Edgley: I have read several of his books and it is the first time I watch a full interview. Still I am not clear what his dark side is.

A man with few friends or not circle at all – Jordan B Peterson: I need to watch this more often

Discipline is Destiny

Very good book, as discipline keeps me in my place and sane. And nobody is perfect, the key is to get back up when failing.

This book is a very good reminder of Jocko Willink: Discipline = Freedom.

Persist and Resist

1) The Exterior (The body)

  • Ruling over the body: Gives the example of Lou Gehrig, I have no clue about baseball but it is very interesting how he kept at the top, no noise, and died so young.
  • Attack the dawn: wake up early (and go early to bed)
  • The strenuous life is the best life: Train your body, take care of your body
  • Quit being a slave: of craving, addiction, vices
  • Avoid the superfluous: – desire -> + rich
  • Clean up your desk
  • Just show up
  • Sweat the small stuff
  • Hustle, Hustle, Hustle: I dont really understand this part.
  • Slow down… to go faster
  • Practice… then practice more.
  • Just work
  • Dress for success: Interesting facts about Angela Merkel.
  • Seek discomfort
  • Manage the load
  • Sleep is an act of character
  • What can you endure?
  • Beyond the body

2) The inner domain (The temperament)

  • Ruling over yourself
  • Look at everything like this
  • Keep the main thing the main thing: Learn to say no.
  • Focus, focus, focus
  • Wait for this sweet fruit
  • Perfectionism is a vice
  • Do the hard things first
  • Can you get back up?
  • The battle against pain
  • The battle against pleasure
  • Fight the provocation
  • Beware this madness
  • Silence is strength: Example from Sparta.
  • Hold, hold your fire
  • Temper your ambition: Example from a young Napoleon noticing the evil of ambition and then later in life he ignored his own advice.
  • Money is a (dangerous) tool
  • Get better every day
  • Share the load
  • Respect time
  • Put up boundaries: Examples of the Queen Elizabeth II
  • Do your best: Example from a young Jimmy Carter, when he recognized not doing his best when he had an interview with a general.
  • Beyond the temperament

3) The Magisterial (The soul)

  • Elevating yourself: Antoninus Pius was the mentor and stepfather of Marcus Aurelius
  • Tolerant with others, strict with yourself
  • Make others better
  • Grace under pressure
  • Carry the load for others
  • Be kind to yourself
  • The power of giving power away
  • Turn the other cheek
  • How to make an exit
  • Endure the unendurable
  • Be best
  • Flexibility is strength
  • Unchanged by success
  • Self-discipline is virtue. Virtue is Self-discipline

TPUv6, Alphafold, OOB design, OpenInterpreter, Walkie-Talkies, Zero Trust SSH, Videos, Finger Strength

Google TPUv6 Analysis: “… cloud infrastructure and which also is being tuned up by Google and Nvidia to run Google’s preferred JAX framework (written in Python) and its XLA cross-platform compiler, which speaks both TPU and GPU fluently.” So I guess this is a cross-compiler for CUDA?

“The A3 Ultra instances will be coming out “later this year,” and they will include Google’s own “Titanium” offload engine paired with Nvidia ConnectX-7 SmartNICs, which will have 3.2 Tb/sec of bandwidth interconnecting GPUs in the cluster using Google’s switching tweaks to RoCE Ethernet.” So again custom ethernet tweaks for RoCE, I hope it makes to the UEC? Not sure I understand having a Titanium offload and a connectx-7, are they not the same?

Alphafold: It is open to be used. Haven’t read properly the license.

OOB Design:

Open Interpreter: The next step in LLMs is to control/interact with your system.

In my laptop fails because I have the free version 🙁 need to try a different one, but looks promising!

open-interpreter main$ interpreter --model gpt-3.5-turbo

●                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Welcome to Open Interpreter.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▌ OpenAI API key not found                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

To use gpt-4o (recommended) please provide an OpenAI API key.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

To use another language model, run interpreter --local or consult the documentation at docs.openinterpreter.com.                                                                                                                                                   

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

OpenAI API key: ********************************************************************************************************************************************************************


Tip: To save this key for later, run one of the following and then restart your terminal.                                                                                                                                                                          
MacOS: echo 'export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key' >> ~/.zshrc                                                                                                                                                                                                       
Linux: echo 'export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key' >> ~/.bashrc                                                                                                                                                                                                      
Windows: setx OPENAI_API_KEY your_api_key                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▌ Model set to gpt-3.5-turbo                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Open Interpreter will require approval before running code.                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Use interpreter -y to bypass this.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Press CTRL-C to exit.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

> what is my os?
Traceback (most recent call last):

Walkie-Talkies: Out of James Bond world.

Zero Trust SSH. From Cloudflare. And this video I watched some months ago (and it is already 4y).

Finger Strength: I follow similar protocol, although not everyday, for warm up and I think it works. I am not getting that super results but at least my fingers are stronger…. and I am not getting injuries!!!! \o/

Cisco AI/ML DC Infra Challenges: I am not quiet fan of Cisco products but this is a good overview.

Key points:

  • Create different networks (inter-GPU, front-end, storage, mgmt),
  • Inter-GPU:
    • – non-blocking, rails-optimized (fig.3)
  • Inter-GPU challenges:
  • – Packet loss: Use PFC +ECN (flow aware)
  • – Network delay: “Rich” QoS – proprietary QoS to handle mice flows. Needs good telemetry
  • – Network congestion: Some kind of communication switch-NIC
  • – Non-uniform utilization: Most vendors have something proprietary here, some dynamic LB and static-pinning?
  • – Simultaneous Elephant flows with large bursts: dynamic buffer protection (proprietary)

Videos:

  • Raoul Pal: Crypto Investment. His company. Go long run, invest a bit you can lose
  • Scott Galloway: Interesting his political analysis. Trump won and it seems Latins voted massively for him.
  • Bruce Dickinson: I read Bruce’s books some years ago so I was surprised to see him in a podcast. Need to finish it.
  • Eric Schmidt: I read one of his books some time ago so again, surprised to find him in a podcast. Still think Google has become evil and most of the good things he says are gone.
  • Javier Milei: I am not economist but it “seems” things are improving in Argentina. He is a character nonetheless. Need to finish it.
  • Matthew McConaughey: His book was really refreshing, and seeing him talking is the same. Raw, real.
  • Alex Honnold: You have to try hard if you want to do hard things.