Publication
Synchronizing Disaggregated Data Structures with One-Sided RDMA: Pitfalls, Experiments and Design Guidelines
Matthias Jasny; Tobias Ziegler; Jacob Nelson-Slivon; Viktor Leis; Carsten Binnig
In: ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), Vol. 50, No. 1, Pages 4:1-4:40, ACM Digital Library, 2025.
Abstract
Remote data structures built with one-sided Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) are at the heart of many
disaggregated database management systems today. Concurrent access to these data structures by thousands
of remote workers necessitates a highly efficient synchronization scheme. Remarkably, our investigation re-
veals that existing synchronization schemes display substantial variations in performance and scalability.
Even worse, some schemes do not correctly synchronize, resulting in rare and hard-to-detect data corruption.
Motivated by these observations, we conduct the first comprehensive analysis of one-sided synchronization
techniques and provide general principles for correct synchronization using one-sided RDMA. Our research
demonstrates that adherence to these principles not only guarantees correctness but also results in substan-
tial performance enhancements. This article is an extended version of [72] in which we investigate modern
400G NICs. Our findings reveal that the challenges persist even with new generations of NICs. Consequently,
we turn our attention to alternative networking hardware, such as smart switches, to address some of the
limitations associated with one-sided synchronization.