{"id":1170563,"date":"2026-05-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=1170563"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:25:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T02:25:04","slug":"microsoft-at-nsdi-2026-advances-in-large-scale-networked-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/microsoft-at-nsdi-2026-advances-in-large-scale-networked-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft at NSDI 2026: Advances in large-scale networked systems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"NSDI<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Large-scale networked systems underpin cloud computing, AI, and distributed applications and services. The USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation 2026 (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (NSDI \u201926) is a leading forum where researchers and practitioners share new research, insights, and advances in the design and operation of these systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft is proud to support NSDI \u201926 as a returning sponsor, reflecting our ongoing commitment to advancing systems and networking research and engaging with the broader community. Microsoft researchers and engineering leaders are also serving on the program committee and in other organizational roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, 11 papers by Microsoft authors and collaborators were accepted to the conference, spanning datacenter and wide-area networks, AI systems, and cloud infrastructure. Together, they highlight advances in building and operating large-scale networked systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t

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\n\t\tSpotlight: Microsoft research newsletter<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n\t\n\t

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Microsoft Research Newsletter<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Stay connected to the research community at Microsoft.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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Technical sessions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Monday, May 4, 2:00\u20133:20 PM<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DroidSpeak: KV Cache Sharing Across Fine-tuned Model Variants (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yuhan Liu, Yuyang Huang, Jiayi Yao, Zhuohan Gu, Kuntai Du, Hanchen Li, Yihua Cheng, and Junchen Jiang, University of Chicago; <\/em>Shan Lu<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Madan Musuvathi<\/em><\/a>, and <\/em>Esha Choukse<\/em><\/a>, Microsoft<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DroidSpeak enables LLMs with the same architecture to share and partially reuse KV caches across models, delivering up to 4 times higher throughput and faster responses with minimal impact on output quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Monday, May 4, 3:50\u20135:30 PM<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eywa: Automating Model-Based Testing using LLMs (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Rajdeep Mondal, Rathin Singha, Todd D. Millstein, and George Varghese, UCLA; <\/em>Ryan Beckett<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Siva Kesava Reddy Kakarla<\/em><\/a>, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eywa uses LLMs to automatically build protocol models from natural language sources, enabling model-based testing. It uncovered 33 bugs, including 16 previously unknown, in widely used network protocol implementations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tuesday, May 5, 2:00\u20133:20 PM<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Octopus: Enhancing CXL Memory Pods via Sparse Topology (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yuhong Zhong, Columbia University; <\/em>Fiodar Kazhamiaka<\/em><\/a>, Pantea Zardoshti, Shuwei Teng and <\/em>Rodrigo Fonseca<\/em><\/a>, Microsoft Azure; Mark D. Hill, University of Wisconsin-Madison; <\/em>Daniel S. Berger<\/em><\/a>, Microsoft Azure and University of Washington<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Octopus introduces a switch-free design for disaggregated memory pods that reduces cost and scales to multi-rack pods. On a three-server hardware prototype, Octopus RPCs are 3.2x faster than in-rack RDMA and 2.4x faster than CXL switches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tuesday, May 5, 3:50\u20135:30 PM<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n