DOLMA: A Data Object Level Memory Disaggregation Framework for HPC Applications

Abstract: Memory disaggregation is promising to scale memory capacity and improves utilization in HPC systems. However, the performance overhead of accessing remote memory poses a significant chal- lenge, particularly for compute-intensive HPC applications where execution times are highly sensitive to data locality. In this work, we present DOLMA, a Data Object Level M emory dis Aggregation framework designed for HPC applications. DOLMA intelligently identifies and offloads data objects to remote memory, while pro- viding quantitative analysis to decide a suitable local memory size. Furthermore, DOLMA leverages the predictable memory access patterns typical in HPC applications and enables remote memory prefetch via a dual-buffer design. By carefully balancing local and remote memory usage and maintaining multi-thread concurrency, DOLMA provides a flexible and efficient solution for leveraging dis- aggregated memory in HPC domains while minimally compromis- ing application performance. Evaluating with eight HPC workloads and computational kernels, DOLMA limits performance degrada- tion to less than 16% while reducing local memory usage by up to 63%, on average.