arXiv · 2510.05476
cMPI: Using CXL Memory Sharing for MPI One-Sided and Two-Sided Inter-Node Communications
Abstract
Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a foundational programming model for high-performance computing. MPI libraries traditionally employ network interconnects (e.g., Ethernet and InfiniBand) and network protocols (e.g., TCP and RoCE) with complex software stacks for cross-node communication. We present cMPI, the first work to optimize MPI point-to-point communication (both one-sided and two-sided) using CXL memory sharing on a real CXL platform, transforming cross-node communication into memory transactions and data copies within CXL memory, bypassing traditional network protocols. We analyze performance across various interconnects and find that CXL memory sharing achieves 7.2x-8.1x lower latency than TCP-based interconnects deployed in small- and medium-scale clusters. We address challenges of CXL memory sharing for MPI communication, including data object management over the dax representation [50], cache coherence, and atomic operations. Overall, cMPI outperforms TCP over standard Ethernet NIC and high-end SmartNIC by up to 49x and 72x in latency and bandwidth, respectively, for small messages.
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Xi Wang, Bin Ma, Jongryool Kim, Byungil Koh, Hoshik Kim, Dong Li. 2025-10-07. cMPI: Using CXL Memory Sharing for MPI One-Sided and Two-Sided Inter-Node Communications. https://doi.org/10.1145/3712285.3759816
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