Artifact Evaluation: Hitchhike (ASPLOS '26)

This repository contains the source code, scripts, and instructions to reproduce the key results presented in the paper "Hitchhike: Efficient Request Submission via Deferred Enforcement of Address Contiguity" (to appear in ASPLOS '26).

1. System Requirements & Hardware

Hitchhike requires specific hardware features (NVMe SSDs) and software configurations.

• Storage: NVMe SSDs (Evaluation includes PCIe 4.0, and 5.0).
• OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
• CPU: Evaluation environment uses 32 physical cores.

Access for Reviewers

We can provide SSH access to a host machine equipped with the required SSDs. However, as the server is located on the campus intranet, access to it requires using OpenVPN. If you need this access, please contact us via HotCRP.

2. Repository Components

This project consists of five major components:

• Linux: A modified Linux kernel (v6.5) with Hitchhike syscall and driver support.
• SPDK: The standard Storage Performance Development Kit.
• FIO: An adapted version of FIO for testing Hitchhike (Raw Block & Filesystem).
• Blaze: A modified graph processing library utilizing Hitchhike.
• LeanStore: An asynchronous B-tree storage engine for the YCSB benchmark.
• Liburing: The io_uring library.

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3. Kernel Configuration

⚠️Note: If you are using our server, you can skip this step, as the Linux 6.5-hitchhike kernel has already been installed on it.

Step 1: Clone the Repository

Ensure you have sufficient disk space for the kernel compilation. Important: Use --recursive to download all submodules.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/haslaboratory/Hitchhike-AE.git
cd Hitchhike-AE

Step 2: Build and Install the Kernel

We provide a script to compile the custom kernel (based on Linux 6.5). Note: This step involves a full kernel compilation and may take significant time (15-30 mins).

cd scripts
sudo ./step1_build_and_install_kernel.sh

Step 3: Reboot into Hitchhike Kernel

After installation, reboot the machine and select the Linux 6.5.0-hitchhike+ kernel.

Option A: One-time boot (Recommended)

sudo grub-reboot "Advanced options for Ubuntu>Ubuntu, with Linux 6.5.0-hitchhike+"
sudo reboot

Option B: Manual Selection (If the above fails, update GRUB manually):

# Check menu entry names
grep 'menuentry' /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# Edit GRUB_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub:
sudo vim /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

Verify Kernel: After rebooting, run uname -r. It should show 6.5.0-hitchhike+.

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4. Device Information Configuration

⚠️ Note: You need to adjust disk paths in the script (step2.2_update_device_ids.py). We use three SSDs by default. Among them, the first one delivers the highest throughput and is used for most of the tests. If three drives are not available, you need to manually configure the device information when running the tests for Figure 9a, 11a, and 13.

The information about the SSD devices used in this paper is as follows:
SSD0 (Dapustor H5300 PCIe 5.0): nvme-DAPUSTOR_DPHV5104T0TA03T2000_HS5U00A23800DTJL
SSD1 (Samsung PM1743 PCIe5.0 ): nvme-MZWLO3T8HCLS-01AGG_S7BUNE0WA01304
SSD2 (Samsung PM9A3 PCIe 4.0): nvme-SAMSUNG_MZQL21T9HCJR-00B7C_S63SNC0T837816

# You can use the following commands to view the specific device ID information. 
ls /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep nvme

# Edit this script to define your target disk,
python3 step2_update_device_ids.py

5. Evaluation: FIO (Figures 8-11)

This section reproduces the microbenchmark results.

⚠️ Warning: In the FIO tests, three NVMe drives were used for some of the test cases. In the tests presented in our paper, SSD0 is the Dapustor H5300 PCIe 5.0; SSD1 is the Samsung PM1743 PCIe 5.0; and SSD2 is the Samsung PM9A3 PCIe 4.0. While the use of the exact SSD models listed above is not mandatory, it is recommended to use at least one PCIe 5.0 SSD with over 2,500K IOPS to fully leverage the advantages of Hitchhike.

5.1 Build FIO & SPDK

cd Hitchhike-AE/scripts
./step3_build_and_install_fio.sh
./step3.1_build_and_install_spdk.sh

⚠️ Warning: This will format the disk and erase all data on the target NVMe drive.

# ⚠️ If three drives are not available, you need to manually configure the device information. 
./step3.2_FIO_raw_disk_setup.sh

5.2 Part A: Run SPDK Tests

These scripts bind devices to the SPDK driver. Since SPDK requires exclusive access to the device, we need to test SPDK first. The data from this part will be used together with the io_uring/libaio data to generate test images later.

cd ../evaluation/spdk
./run_SSD0.sh 
# ⚠️Three SSDs are used by default. You may skip this step if no additional SSD devices are available. 
./run_SSD1.sh 
./run_SSD2.sh 

5.3 Part B: Run Standard FIO (Raw Disk)

Reproduces Figures 8, 9, 10 (a-d).

# You can enter the folders with the corresponding numbers in sequence,  and navigate to the directory figure<N>/<N><x> (e.g., figure8/8a) to run the specific test..
cd ../figure<N>/<N><x>
sudo ./run.sh

5.4 Part C: Run Standard FIO (Filesystem)

Reproduces Figure 11 (a-d).

cd Hitchhike-AE/scripts
# ⚠️ If three drives are not available, you need to manually configure the device information. 
sudo ./step3.3_FIO_filesystem_setup.sh

cd ../evaluation/figure11/11<x>
sudo ./run.sh

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6. Evaluation: LeanStore (Figure 14)

⚠️ Warning: Only one SSD is required for the Leanstore test. We recommend using a PCIe 5.0 SSD. Compile and run the LeanStore benchmark (YCSB). If compilation errors occur, the issue may lie with the g++ compiler version. You can switch to G++ 11.

cd Hitchhike-AE/scripts
./step4_build_and_install_leanstore.sh
cd ../evaluation/figure14
# The tests are performed on the first SSD by default, namely SSD0.
./run.sh

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7. Evaluation: Blaze (Figure 13)

7.1 Install Dependencies (GCC-7)

Blaze requires g++-7. Please install it and switch the default compiler:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y g++-7
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-7 100
sudo update-alternatives --config g++
# Verify version (should be 7.x)
g++ --version

7.2 Build and Download Datasets

cd Hitchhike-AE/scripts
./step5_build_and_install_blaze.sh

⚠️ Warning: Only one SSD is required for the Blaze test. Please execute it on the PM1743 (SSD1, PCIe5.0) .

Download and unzip the required graph datasets. Note: Some datasets are large (e.g., rmat30 is 102GB). For a quick verification, you may start with smaller datasets like sk2005 or twitter.

# The data is downloaded to the second SSD by default, namely SSD1 (TARGET_DIR="mnt/SSD1/").
sudo ./step5.1_download_dataset.sh

7.3 Run

cd ../evaluation/figure13
./run.sh

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Claims and Key Results

Our modified Linux kernel implements the following contributions:

• A new system call optimized for io_uring and libaio.
• I/O request resubmission logic across the syscall interface, file system, block layer, and NVMe driver.
• Integration support for FIO, LeanStore, and Blaze.

Key Figures Reproduced:

• Microbenchmarks: Figures 8, 9, 10, 11 (FIO)
• Applications: Figure 13 (Blaze), Figure 14 (LeanStore)