A Wake-Up Call for Kernel-Bypass on Modern Hardware

Kernel-bypass technologies eliminate the overhead of traditional OS stacks, offering direct access to high-speed I/O devices such as network and storage. This paper argues that kernel-bypass is no longer an optional optimization but a necessary architectural strategy for I/O-heavy applications like database systems. The motivation stems from two trends: stagnating CPU performance and rapid advances in I/O hardware, such as 800 Gbit/s NICs and SSDs exceeding 12M IOPS. In our evaluation, we show that, given these trends, it is no longer possible for DBMSs to saturate modern NICs or SSDs with traditional kernel stacks. We thus urge the research community to prioritize kernel-bypass technologies to fully harness the potential of emerging hardware in database systems.