DPU-Powered File System Virtualization - Improving Cloud Infrastructure Efficiency

Learn about an innovative approach to file system virtualization in cloud infrastructure through this technical talk that explores decoupling file system clients using Data Processing Units (DPUs). Discover how IBM Research and VU University Amsterdam researchers leverage DPU technology to offload client-side drivers from host CPUs, resulting in 4.4x improved CPU efficiency per I/O operation. Examine the implementation details of their framework that utilizes Linux virtio-fs/FUSE to achieve comparable performance while requiring zero configuration changes from tenants. Understand the benefits of this architecture including reduced CPU overhead, enhanced isolation between cloud tenants, and simplified support for baremetal deployments. Follow along as the researchers demonstrate how moving infrastructure services to DPUs addresses key challenges in current hypervisor-based approaches while maintaining flexibility and performance.