Thanks. I read the paper now and I kind of get why you guys think they're similar.

I find them similar too in what they're trying to achieve [blast-radius minimization], but I think AWS' concept of cells [going by re:invent presentation] is more of an architectural pattern with strong inclination towards certain non-negotiable reqs ["thinnest possible routing layer", "workload migration among cells is a first-class citizen", "avoiding critical cross-cell tasks/dependencies other than migration", "creating/removing cells are zero-downtime events"] for different flavours of services [stateful vs stateless (dynamodb vs lambda?), zonal versus regional versus global (ebs vs kinesis vs route53), for example] than a concrete implementation like Borg.

I might be wrong on all accounts, though.