Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
NSDI '26 - ZOC: Elastic and Cost-Efficient Virtual SmartNIC Architecture for Cloud Physical Machines
Naixuan Guan, Xiaokang Hu, Yisheng Xie, Xishi Qiu, Chaojie Liu, Yuchao Cao, Banghao Ying, Dianchen Tian, Yu Zhou, Yangzeyu Zhang, Hujun Ge, Yibin Shen, and Jiesheng Wu, Alibaba Cloud Computing
DPU-based SmartNICs are reshaping cloud infrastructure by offloading core I/O functions, enabling cloud physical machines that support both bare-metal and virtualized environments. However, large-scale deployments face practical challenges—including operational inconsistency across heterogeneous fleets, limited resource elasticity, and performance bottlenecks caused by slow-path processing. We present ZOC, a software-defined virtual SmartNIC architecture that transforms general-purpose servers equipped with commodity NICs into full-featured cloud physical machines. ZOC delivers compatibility with existing infrastructure and provides a user experience on par with DPU-based nodes—without requiring any specialized hardware. At its core, ZOC integrates a passthrough NIC and dynamically provisioned host resources into a dedicated service VM, forming an elastic and programmable acceleration platform. Built upon this foundation, it introduces an efficient cross-domain device abstraction that exposes standardized I/O devices to the host, enabling seamless access to cloud storage and VPC networks. Extensive evaluation shows that ZOC achieves superior cost efficiency, eliminates slow-path bottlenecks, and provides high maintainability. Deployed in a major cloud, ZOC serves diverse public and private cloud services as a production-ready complement to existing DPU-based solutions.
View the full NSDI '26 program at usenix.org/conference/nsdi26/technical-sessions
NSDI '26 - ZOC: Elastic and Cost-Efficient Virtual SmartNIC Architecture for Cloud Physical Machines
Naixuan Guan, Xiaokang Hu, Yisheng Xie, Xishi Qiu, Chaojie Liu, Yuchao Cao, Banghao Ying, Dianchen Tian, Yu Zhou, Yangzeyu Zhang, Hujun Ge, Yibin Shen, and Jiesheng Wu, Alibaba Cloud Computing
DPU-based SmartNICs are reshaping cloud infrastructure by offloading core I/O functions, enabling cloud physical machines that support both bare-metal and virtualized environments. However, large-scale deployments face practical challenges—including operational inconsistency across heterogeneous fleets, limited resource elasticity, and performance bottlenecks caused by slow-path processing. We present ZOC, a software-defined virtual SmartNIC architecture that transforms general-purpose servers equipped with commodity NICs into full-featured cloud physical machines. ZOC delivers compatibility with existing infrastructure and provides a user experience on par with DPU-based nodes—without requiring any specialized hardware. At its core, ZOC integrates a passthrough NIC and dynamically provisioned host resources into a dedicated service VM, forming an elastic and programmable acceleration platform. Built upon this foundation, it introduces an efficient cross-domain device abstraction that exposes standardized I/O devices to the host, enabling seamless access to cloud storage and VPC networks. Extensive evaluation shows that ZOC achieves superior cost efficiency, eliminates slow-path bottlenecks, and provides high maintainability. Deployed in a major cloud, ZOC serves diverse public and private cloud services as a production-ready complement to existing DPU-based solutions.
View the full NSDI '26 program at usenix.org/conference/nsdi26/technical-sessions
