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I have not scrutinized the paper’s analysis of PowerTCP or its comparison with other systems such as TIMELY and HPCC, and I have no reason to question those measurements. Based on my reading of the paper, its conclusion that PowerTCP provides significant benefits in today’s TCP-based datacenters seems plausible.
The PowerTCP authors have issued their own statement, agreeing with the problems above.
About the simulator
The Homa simulator used for the PowerTCP paper was not developed by either the PowerTCP authors or the Homa developers. It is in a relatively early stage of development, but unfortunately advertised itself in a way that suggested it was endorsed by the Homa creators as a reference implementation. This is not the case, and the wording has subsequently been changed, but the simulator’s original description could easily mislead people into placing undue trust in it.
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