On the Verification Problem of Remote Direct Memory Access programs (Extended Version with Appendix)

2026-05-11

AI Summary

This work addresses the robustness verification problem for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) programs—specifically, whether their behaviors under RDMA semantics are equivalent to those under sequential consistency (SC). While this problem is generally undecidable, the paper establishes, for the first time, that robustness for RDMA programs is decidable. The key insight is a canonical form for violation executions, which enables a reduction of robustness checking to a reachability problem in finite-state programs augmented with counters. Building on this reduction, the authors derive tight complexity bounds: the general case lies in EXPSPACE, and the bound improves to PSPACE when polling operations are absent. A corresponding decision algorithm is also implemented based on this theoretical foundation.

Abstract

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is a technology that allows direct memory access from the memory of one computer into that of another without involving either one's operating system. This enables high-throughput, low-latency networking, which is especially useful in massively parallel computer clusters. In this paper, we study the reachability and robustness problems for RDMA programs. We show that reachability is undecidable in general, even for a restricted fragment of the model. We then focus on robustness, which asks whether a program exhibits the same behaviours under the RDMA and sequential consistency (SC) semantics, and prove that this problem is decidable. Our central technical result establishes a normal form for robustness violations, showing that any non-robust program admits a violating execution of a specific form. We then leverage this normal form to obtain a decision procedure that reduces robustness to reachability in finite-state programs with counters, yielding an EXPSPACE upper bound in the general case, and a PSPACE upper bound in the absence of poll operations. Finally, we also show that both of these bounds are optimal.

Problem

• Remote Direct Memory Access
• reachability
• robustness
• sequential consistency
• verification

Innovation

• Remote Direct Memory Access
• robustness
• sequential consistency
• decidability
• complexity bounds