Homepage for
Marcos K. Aguilera

CONTACT

mkaguilera at gmail com
+1-650-961-5271

CV

Click here

NEWS

2024-jul-23:  Quicksand and Eden papers accepted to NSDI 2025
2024-mar-21: DSig paper accepted to OSDI 2024
2023-sep-15: Logical memory pools paper accepted to HotNets 2023
2023-apr-21: Quicksand paper accepted to HotOS 2023
2022-nov-04: I will give a keynote at the WORDS 2022 workshop on  2022-nov-17
2022-sep-20: uBFT paper accepted to ASPLOS 2023
2022-aug-15: Dinomo paper accepted to VLDB 2023
2022-jul-11: OSDI 2022 is happening, check it out
2022-jul-08: Nu paper accepted to  NSDI 2023
2021-jul-23:  Frugal BFT paper accepted to DISC 2021
2021-jul-01: I am co-chairing the program committee of the OSDI 2022 conference
2020-aug-18: AIFM and Mu papers accepted to OSDI 2020
2020-feb-24: I am co-chairing the program committee of the FAST 2021 conference

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Distributed systems

SELECTED PROJECTS

• Disaggregated and far memory. Motivated, designed, and implemented disaggregated and far memory as a new type of memory accessible remotely, starting with a vision statement (SoCC 2017), leading to new abstractions (ATC 2018, OSDI 2020, NSDI 2025), models (NSDI 2023, WORDS 2023, HotOS 2023, HotNets 2023), mechanisms (EuroSys 2020, NSDI 2025), remote data structures (SYSTOR 2019, HotOS 2019), and disaggregated key-value stores (VLDB 2023). 

• Microsecond-scale computing. Designed, implemented, and evaluated systems that operate at the microsecond scale, including state machine replication (PODC 2019, OSDI 2020), Byzantine fault tolerance (DISC 2021, ASPLOS 2023), and digital signatures (OSDI 2024).

• M&M model. Proposed the message-and-memory (M&M) model of distributed computing, which combines message-passing and shared memory (PODC 2018). Under this model, devised better algorithms for reaching agreement (PODC 2019, DISC 2021).

• Yesquel. Designed, implemented, and evaluated a scalable and distributed SQL database system for Web applications, which features a new architecture and distributed balanced trees (SOSP 2015). Available on github.

• Geo-distributed systems. Proposed abstractions and concepts to develop distributed systems that span many data centers, including transaction chains (SOSP 2013), parallel snapshot isolation (SOSP 2011), online migration (ATC 2011), and RPC chains (NSDI 2009).

  • Reliable failure detectors. Proposed mechanisms to realize reliable failure detectors (EuroSys 2015, NSDI 2013, SOSP 2011, HotOS 2009).

• Sinfonia. Designed, implemented, and evaluated lightweight transactions to develop applications in data centers (TOCS 2009, SOSP 2007).

• Black-box performance debugging. Proposed concepts and techniques to debug the performance of complex distributed systems (SOSP 2003).

• Reconfiguration without consensus. Proposed algorithms to reconfigure distributed storage without the use of consensus (JACM 2011, PODC 2009).

• Leader election. Proposed algorithms for electing leaders in distributed systems (DIST COMP 2008, PODC 2004, PODC 2003, DISC 2001).

• Content-based publish-subscribe systems. Proposed a publish-subscribe system based on message content, with a matching algorithm that runs in sub-linear time (PODC 1999).

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Co-chair of the program committee WORDS 2023
Co-chair of the program committee OSDI 2022
Co-chair of the program committee FAST 2021
Co-chair of the program committee HotStorage 2017
Co-chair of the program committee SoCC 2016
Chair of the program committee OPODIS 2014
Chair of the program committee DISC 2012
Co-chair of algorithms and theory track ICDCS 2012
Co-chair of program committee ICDCN 2011
Co-chair of program committee LADIS 2010
Steering committee LADC 2011, LADC 2009
Co-chair of Industry track PODC 2009

Program committee SOSP 2024, OSDI 2024, EuroSys 2024, ASPLOS 2024,  PODC 2024, ApPLIED 2024
Program committee SOSP 2023, WORDS 2023, APSys 2023,  ApPLIED 2023
Program committee OSDI 2022, ApPLIED 2022
Program committee FAST 2021
Program committee ASPLOS 2019, HotOS 2019
Program committee OSDI 2018, DISC 2018
Program committee SOSP 2017, DISC 2017
Program committee VLDB 2016, ASPLOS 2016, PODC 2016
Program committee SOSP 2015, HotOS 2015, DISC 2015, HotStorage 2015
Program committee DSN 2014, HotDep 2014
Program committee DSN 2013, FAST 2013, Hotdep 2013
Program committee DSN 2012, HotDep 2012, ICDCN 2012, P2P 2012, SSS 2012
Program committee DISC 2011, FAST 2011, CloudDB 2011, LADC 2011
Program committee SPAA 2011, OPODIS 2011, TADDS 2011
Program committee PODC 2010, DISC 2010, DSN 2010, OPODIS 2010, SAN 2010, SSS 2010
Program committee DISC 2009, Hotdep 2009, ICDCN 2009, LADC 2009
Program committee PODC 2009, OPODIS 2009, SSS 2009
Program committee OSDI 2008, DSN 2008, ICDCN 2008

RECENT PAPERS

1. Practice of distributed systems

Quicksand: harnessing stranded datacenter resources with granular computing.
Zhenyuan Ruan, Shihang Li, Kaiyan Fan, Marcos K. Aguilera, Adam Belay, Seo Jin Park, Malte Schwarzkopf.
Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2025.

Eden: developer-friendly application-integrated far memory.
Anil Yelam, Stewart Grant, Saarth Deshpande, Nadav Amit, Radhika Niranjan Mysore, Amy Ousterhout, Marcos K. Aguilera, Alex C. Snoeren.
Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2025.

SWARM: replicating shared disaggregated-memory data in no time.
Antoine Murat, Clement Burgelin, Athanasios Xygkis, Igor Zablotchi, Marcos K. Aguilera, Rachid Guerraoui.
ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), November 2024.

DSig: breaking the barrier of signatures in data centers.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Clement Burgelin, Rachid Guerraoui, Antoine Murat, Athanasios Xygkis, Igor Zablotchi.
Usenix Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), July 2024.

Logical memory pools: flexible and local disaggregated memory.
Emmanuel Amaro, Stephanie Wang, Aurojit Panda, Marcos K. Aguilera.
ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets), November 2023.

Limited access: the truth behind far memory.
Anil Yelam, Stewart Grant, Enze Liu, Radhika Niranjan Mysore, Marcos K. Aguilera, Amy Ousterhout, Alex C. Snoeren.
Workshop on Resource Disaggregation and Serverless (WORDS), October 2023.

DINOMO: an elastic, scalable, high-performance key-value store for disaggregated persistent memory.
Se Kwon Lee, Soujanya Ponnapalli, Sharad Singhal, Marcos K. Aguilera, Kimberly Keeton, Vijay Chidambaram.
International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), August 2023.

Unleashing true utility computing with Quicksand.
Zhenyuan Ruan, Shihang Li, Kaiyan Fan, Marcos K. Aguilera, Adam Belay, Seo Jin Park, Malte Schwarzkopf.
Usenix Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS), June 2023.

Nu: achieving microsecond-scale resource fungibility with logical processes.
Zhenyuan Ruan, Seo Jin Park, Marcos K. Aguilera, Adam Belay, Malte Schwarzkopf.
Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2023.

uBFT: microsecond-scale BFT using disaggregated memory.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Naama Ben David, Rachid Guerraoui, Antoine Murat, Athanasios Xygkis, Igor Zablotchi.
ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), March 2023.

AIFM: high-performance, application-integrated far memory.
Zhenyuan Ruan, Malte Schwarzkopf, Marcos K. Aguilera, Adam Belay.
Usenix Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), November 2020.

Microsecond consensus for microsecond applications.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Naama Ben-David, Rachid Guerraoui, Virendra J. Marathe, Athanasios Xygkis, Igor Zablotchi.
Usenix Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), November 2020.

Can far memory improve job throughput?
Emmanuel Amaro, Christopher Branner-Augmon, Zhihong Luo, Amy Ousterhout, Marcos K. Aguil- era, Aurojit Panda, Sylvia Ratnasamy, Scott Shenker.
European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys), April 2020.

Hillview: a trillion-cell spreadsheet for big data.
Mihai Budiu, Parikshit Gopalan, Lalith Suresh, Udi Wieder, Han Kruiger, Marcos K. Aguilera.
International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), August 2019.

Storm: a fast transactional dataplane for remote data structures.
Stanko Novakovic, Yizhou Shan, Aasheesh Kolli, Michael Cui, Yiying Zhang, Haggai Eran, Boris Pismenny, Liran Liss, Michael Wei, Dan Tsafrir, Marcos K. Aguilera.
ACM International Systems and Storage Conference (SYSTOR), June 2019.

Designing far memory data structures: think outside the box.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Kimberly Keeton, Stanko Novakovic, Sharad Singhal.
Usenix Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS), May 2019.

How to implement any concurrent data structure.
Irina Calciu, Siddhartha Sen, Mahesh Balakrishnan, Marcos K. Aguilera.
Communications of the ACM, December 2018.

Remote regions: a simple abstraction for remote memory.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Nadav Amit, Irina Calciu, Xavier Deguillard, Jayneel Gandhi, Stanko Novakovic, Arun Ramanathan, Pratap Subrahmanyam, Lalith Suresh, Kiran Tati, Rajesh Venkatasubramanian, Michael Wei.
Usenix Annual Technical Conference (ATC), July 2018.

Remote memory in the age of fast networks.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Nadav Amit, Irina Calciu, Xavier Deguillard, Jayneel Gandhi, Pratap Subrahmanyam, Lalith Suresh, Kiran Tati, Rajesh Venkatasubramanian, Michael Wei.
ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC), September 2017.

2. Theory of distributed systems

Frugal byzantine computing.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Naama Ben David, Rachid Guerraoui, Dalia Papuc, Athanasios Xygkis, Igor Zablotchi.
International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), October 2021.

The impact of RDMA on agreement.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Naama Ben-David, Rachid Guerraoui, Virendra J. Marathe, Igor Zablotchi.
ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2019), July 2019.

Passing messages while sharing memory.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Naama Ben-David, Irina Calciu, Rachid Guerraoui, Erez Petrank, Sam Toueg.
ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), July 2018.

Locking timestamps versus locking objects.
Marcos K. Aguilera, Tudor David, Rachid Guerraoui, Junxiong Wang.
ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), July 2018.

ALL PAPERS

Click here