In plain words: Sending data between far-apart data centers, this adds a checklist of which pieces arrived so programs can pick their own fix for lost pieces—like rebuilding from extra copies—instead of the usual resend rule. On existing chips it keeps up with the network's speed.
Abstract · SDR-RDMA: Software-Defined Reliability Architecture for Planetary Scale RDMA Communication
RDMA is vital for efficient distributed training across datacenters, but millisecond-scale latencies complicate the design of its reliability layer. We show that depending on long-haul link characteristics, such as drop rate, distance and bandwidth, the widely used Selective Repeat algorithm can be inefficient, warranting alternatives like Erasure Coding. To enable such alternatives on existing hardware, we propose SDR-RDMA, a software-defined reliability stack for RDMA. Its core is a lightweight SDR SDK that extends standard point-to-point RDMA semantics -- fundamental to AI networking stacks -- with a receive buffer bitmap. SDR bitmap enables partial message completion to let applications implement custom reliability schemes tailored to specific deployments, while preserving zero-copy RDMA benefits. By offloading the SDR backend to NVIDIA's Data Path Accelerator (DPA), we achieve line-rate performance, enabling efficient inter-datacenter communication and advancing reliability innovation for inter-datacenter training.
Mikhail Khalilov, Siyuan Shen, Marcin Chrapek, Tiancheng Chen, Kenji Nakano, Peter-Jan Gootzen, Salvatore Di Girolamo, Rami Nudelman, Gil Bloch, Sreevatsa Anantharamu, Mahmoud Elhaddad, Jithin Jose, et al.
arXiv:2505.05366 · cs.NI · submitted May 8, 2025 · updated May 10, 2025
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