farm · research · also Fast Remote Memory

FaRM

FaRM is a research distributed-memory platform that uses RDMA and software transaction protocols to access replicated objects across a cluster.

Related Observatory article: FaRM on hesela.com

The NSDI 2014 design checks object-header and cache-line versions after a remote read, retrying inconsistent copies. Its shared address space is an object API, not an NVMe namespace. [1]

The SOSP 2015 protocol uses replicated non-volatile logs; its durability design combines battery-backed DRAM with SSD save on power failure. Network completion is interpreted within that protocol. [2]

FaSST offers a contrasting two-sided datagram RPC design; its paper did not implement machine-failure recovery. [3]

Relations

related
RDMA storage networking, InfiniBand, Strict serializability

Limitations

  • RDMA alone supplies neither FaRM's transaction guarantees nor its power-failure protection. [1, 2]

Citations

  1. Dragojevic, Narayanan, Hodson and Castro. FaRM: Fast Remote Memory. NSDI 2014, sections 3.1-3.5. (accessed 2026-11-13)
  2. Dragojevic et al. No compromises: distributed transactions with consistency, availability, and performance. SOSP 2015, sections 2-4. (accessed 2026-11-13)
  3. Kalia, Kaminsky and Andersen. FaSST: Fast, Scalable and Simple Distributed Transactions with Two-Sided (RDMA) Datagram RPCs. OSDI 2016. (accessed 2026-11-13)
Sources & caveats
  • Historical source review across the NSDI 2014 and SOSP 2015 designs, with an OSDI 2016 contrast; no prototype execution or performance reproduction.

JSON: /data/terms/farm.json

Published by Hesela team · Updated

Report a correction · Editorial standards · Reuse guidance

Cite this page
Hesela team. FaRM. Hesela. 2026-11-13. https://hesela.dev/terms/farm/