Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau

DB
3papers
7citations
Novelty58%
AI Score43

3 Papers

95.6DCApr 10
TensorHub: Scalable and Elastic Weight Transfer for LLM RL Training

Chenhao Ye, Huaizheng Zhang, Mingcong Han et al.

Modern LLM reinforcement learning (RL) workloads require a highly efficient weight transfer system to scale training across heterogeneous computational resources. However, existing weight transfer approaches either fail to provide flexibility for dynamically scaling clusters or incur fundamental data movement overhead, resulting in poor performance. We introduce Reference-Oriented Storage (ROS), a new storage abstraction for RL weight transfer that exploits the highly replicated model weights in place. ROS presents the illusion that certain versions of the model weights are stored and can be fetched on demand. Underneath, ROS does not physically store any copies of the weights; instead, it tracks the workers that hold these weights on GPUs for inference. Upon request, ROS directly uses them to serve reads. We build TensorHub, a production-quality system that extends the ROS idea with topology-optimized transfer, strong consistency, and fault tolerance. Evaluation shows that TensorHub fully saturates RDMA bandwidth and adapts to three distinct rollout workloads with minimal engineering effort. Specifically, TensorHub reduces total GPU stall time by up to 6.7x for standalone rollouts, accelerates weight update for elastic rollout by 4.8x, and cuts cross-datacenter rollout stall time by 19x. TensorHub has been deployed in production to support cutting-edge RL training.

54.7OSApr 16
Don't Let AI Agents YOLO Your Files: Shifting Information and Control to Filesystems for Agent Safety and Autonomy

Shawn Wanxiang Zhong, Junxuan Liao, Jing Liu et al.

AI coding agents operate directly on users' filesystems, where they regularly corrupt data, delete files, and leak secrets. Current approaches force a tradeoff between safety and autonomy: unrestricted access risks harm, while frequent permission prompts burden users and block agents. To understand this problem, we conduct the first systematic study of agent filesystem misuse, analyzing 290 public reports across 13 frameworks. Our analysis reveals that today's agents have limited information about their filesystem effects and insufficient control over them. We therefore argue for shifting this information and control to the filesystem itself. Based on this principle, we design YoloFS, an agent-native filesystem with three techniques. Staging isolates all mutations before commit, giving users corrective control. Snapshots extend this control to agents, letting them detect and correct their own mistakes. Progressive permission provides users with preventive control by gating access with minimal interaction. To evaluate YoloFS, we introduce a new methodology that captures user-agent-filesystem interactions. On 11 tasks with hidden side effects, YoloFS enables agent self-correction in 8 while keeping all effects staged and reviewable. On 112 routine tasks, YoloFS requires fewer user interactions while matching the baseline success rate.

DBMay 28, 2020
From WiscKey to Bourbon: A Learned Index for Log-Structured Merge Trees

Yifan Dai, Yien Xu, Aishwarya Ganesan et al.

We introduce BOURBON, a log-structured merge (LSM) tree that utilizes machine learning to provide fast lookups. We base the design and implementation of BOURBON on empirically-grounded principles that we derive through careful analysis of LSM design. BOURBON employs greedy piecewise linear regression to learn key distributions, enabling fast lookup with minimal computation, and applies a cost-benefit strategy to decide when learning will be worthwhile. Through a series of experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets, we show that BOURBON improves lookup performance by 1.23x-1.78x as compared to state-of-the-art production LSMs.