DEX: Scaling applications beyond machine boundaries

Abstract

—Increasing the computing performance within a single-machine form factor is becoming increasingly difficult due to the complexities in scaling processor interconnects and coherence protocols. On the other hand, converting existing applications to run on multiple nodes requires a significant effort to rewrite application logic in distributed programming models and adapt the code to the underlying network characteristics. This paper presents DEX, an operating system-level approach to extend the execution boundary of existing applications over multiple machines. DEX allows the threads in a process to be relocated and distributed dynamically through a simple function call. DEX makes it trivial for developers to convert any application to be distributed over multiple nodes and for applications to transparently utilize disaggregated resources in a rack-scale system with minimal effort. Evaluation results using a running prototype and eight real applications showed promising results – six out of the eight scaled beyond the single-machine performance on DEX.