SBB

This repository contains the artifact of the OSDI '2026 paper: SBB: Eliminating Centralized Bottlenecks in Userspace Network Runtime.

Overview

.
├── BE-app/
├── dpdk/
├── multilane-client/
├── multilane-kernel/
├── multilane-server/
├── scripts/
└── README.md

It mainly contains:

• multilane-server/: the SBB user-space network runtime and server datapath
• multilane-client/: the DPDK-based client and load generator to evaluate multilane-server
• multilane-kernel/: a kernel tree customized for SBB, based on Linux v6.12.20
• dpdk/: the DPDK library, unmodified v25.07.0
• scripts/: helper scripts for build, NIC binding, execution, and result processing, etc.

Environment Requirements

In order to run and evaluate SBB, the following requirements should be confirmed:

• CPU: Intel CPU with User Interrupts support (i.e. 4th Gen or later Intel Xeon Scalable processor)
• CPU cores: at least 32 cores available to the workload
• Network: two NICs that can be bound to vfio-pci, each at 100 Gbps link rate or higher
• Compiler: a compiler with support for -muintr
• BIOS: xAPIC configuration
• Software: git, Python 3, Meson, Ninja, pkg-config, etc.

For reference, we used the following setup when conducting evaluations in the paper:

Server:

• CPU: 2× Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8592+ (64 cores per socket)
• RAM: 16× 64 GB DDR5 RDIMM (~1 TB total)
• Storage: 7 TB logical volume (Broadcom MegaRAID MR9560-16i)
• NIC: Intel E810-C dual QSFP (100G-class)

Client:

• CPU: 2× AMD EPYC 9965 (192 cores per socket)
• RAM: 16× 64 GB DDR5 RDIMM (~1 TB total)
• Storage: 2× ~1.7 TB (Intel SSDSC2KB01)
• NIC: Intel E810-C dual QSFP (100G-class)

Getting Started

Kernel

This step is only needed on server.

We provide two ways to obtain the MultiLane-kernel source:

1. Use the multilane-kernel/ directory in this repository directly.
2. Apply the multilane-kernel/multilane-kernel.pt patch file. Download the Linux kernel source from the official Linux repository, then run patch -p1 < multilane-kernel.pt. This approach is more portable, but when using other kernel versions you may need to resolve some conflicts.

Follow these steps to use the new kernel:

1. Build and Install the kernel:

cd multilane-kernel
sudo ./build_and_install_kernel.sh

2. Configure Kernel Commandline:

Open /etc/default/grub, add or modify the line:

GRUB_DEFAULT="Advanced options for Ubuntu>Ubuntu, with Linux 6.12.20-multilane"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="isolcpus=0-48 nohz_full=0-48 intel_iommu=on iommu=pt watchdog_thresh=0 lapic=notscdeadline nohz=off highres=off nohibernate nox2apic"

Note that core numbers for isolcpus and nohz_full should be adjusted according to the demand.

3. Update and reboot:

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

Build and Setup

This step is needed on both server and client.

1. Build DPDK:

sudo ./scripts/build_dpdk.sh

This builds DPDK into:

• dpdk/build
• dpdk/build-install

2. Build Server:

sudo ./scripts/build_multilane_server.sh

The server binary is generated at multilane-server/build/multilane-server.

3. Build Client:

sudo ./scripts/build_multilane_client.sh

The client binary is generated at multilane-client/build/multilane-client.

4. DPDK Setup:

The repository currently provides a minimal helper script:

sudo ./scripts/dpdk_config.sh

This script currently:

• allocates 32768 2 MB hugepages
• loads vfio-pci
• binds PCI device 0000:27:00.0 to vfio-pci

Adjust the configurations to match your requirements and the machine environment.

Run Experiments

1. Run the server:

./scripts/run_multilane_server.sh

Press Ctrl+C to stop the server.

Edit the command line in scripts/run_multilane_server.sh as needed for your setup. To check multilane-server options, run the binary with -- -h. They are also organized below:

./multilane-server/build/multilane-server [EAL options] -- -p PORTMASK [-A APP] [-L] [-T] [-C]

Server options:

• -p: port bitmask in hex (e.g. 0x1)
• -A <APP>: application type: synthetic (default), memcached, or rocksdb
• -L: enable load balancing
• -T: enable timer interrupt
• -C: enable co-location
• -h: print usage

2. Run the client:

./scripts/run_multilane_client.sh

Press Ctrl+C to stop the client.

Edit the command line in scripts/run_multilane_client.sh as needed for your setup. To check multilane-client options, run the binary with -- -h. They are also organized below:

./multilane-client/build/multilane-client [EAL options] -- \
  -c COUNT -l TARGET_RPS -p PORTMASK -t TX_CORES -r RX_CORES [-A APP] [-d DIST] [-R GET_RATIO]

Client options:

• -c: number of packets to send
• -l: target total RPS across all TX workers
• -p: port bitmask in hex (e.g. 0x1)
• -t: TX worker lcore range (e.g. 1-16 or comma-separated IDs)
• -r: RX worker lcore range (same range syntax as -t)
• -A: application type: synthetic (default), memcached, or rocksdb
• -d: synthetic load distribution; only valid with -A synthetic. One of: fixed_1, fixed_10, exponential_10, high_bimodal, extreme_bimodal, rocksdb_ht, rocksdb_lt, tpcc (default: fixed_1)
• -R: GET fraction in [0,1] for memcached/rocksdb request mixes; only valid with -A memcached or -A rocksdb
• -h: print usage

For application workloads and interfaces, see multilane-server/applications/README.md.