一句话：面向数据中心网内计算，探讨在可编程网络设备上卸载计算以降低延迟、流量与能耗。
论文关注可编程网络设备兴起与数据中心流量增长所催生的网内计算。将计算卸载到交换机、网络加速器或中间盒，可让网络请求就地低延迟处理，减少数据中心流量并缓解拥塞，还可让服务器低功耗运行以节能。然而，现有交换机技术不提供通用计算能力，且商用数据中心网络具有层次化 fat-tree、多路径等复杂性，使数据中心内实现网内计算面临挑战。标题 IncBricks 指向对此问题的系统探索；但给出的摘要未展开其具体设计、实现与评估结果。
The emergence of programmable network devices and the increasing data traffic of datacenters motivate the idea of in-network computation. By offloading compute operations onto intermediate networking devices (e.g., switches, network accelerators, middleboxes), one can (1) serve network requests on the fly with low latency; (2) reduce datacenter traffic and mitigate network congestion; and (3) save energy by running servers in a low-power mode. However, since (1) existing switch technology doesn't provide general computing capabilities, and (2) commodity datacenter networks are complex (e.g., hierarchical fat-tree topologies, multipath communication), enabling in-network computation inside a datacenter is challenging.