Stanko Novakovic
I'm a member of SystemsResearch@Google (SRG) where I work on efficient and reliable systems infrastructure. My research background is in operating systems, distributed systems and computer architecture. I currently focus on building next-generation virtual machines and systems for machine learning, with the goal of improving the cost efficiency of running large-scale datacenter services. Before Google, I was at Microsoft Research, working on systems that leverage emerging hardware to optimize cloud platforms. Before Microsoft, as a graduate student and also at VMware, I worked on high-performance networks and distributed systems that use such networks for low-latency access to remote data. My collaborators and I won the Best Paper Award at SYSTOR 2019, Best Paper Honorable Mention at SIGMOD 2019, and a Distinguished Paper Award at ASPLOS 2023. I hold a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Novi Sad, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
Authored Publications
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Wave: Offloading Resource Management to SmartNIC Cores
Jack Humphries
Neel Natu
Kostis Kaffes
Hank Levy
Christos Kozyrakis
2025
Preview abstract
SmartNICs are increasingly deployed in datacenters to offload tasks from server CPUs, improving the efficiency and flexibility of datacenter security, networking and storage. Optimizing cloud server efficiency in this way is critically important to ensure that virtually all server resources are available to paying customers. Userspace system software, specifically, decision-making tasks performed by various operating system subsystems, is particularly well suited for execution on mid-tier SmartNIC ARM cores. To this end, we introduce Wave, a framework for offloading userspace system software to processes/agents running on the SmartNIC. Wave uses Linux userspace systems to better align system functionality with SmartNIC capabilities. It also introduces a new host-SmartNIC communication API that enables offloading of even μs-scale system software. To evaluate Wave, we offloaded preexisting userspace system software including kernel thread scheduling, memory management, and an RPC stack to SmartNIC ARM cores, which showed a performance degradation of 1.1%-7.4% in an apples-to-apples comparison with on-host implementations. Wave recovered host resources consumed by on-host system software for memory management (saving 16 host cores), RPCs (saving 8 host cores), and virtual machines (an 11.2% performance improvement). Wave highlights the potential for rethinking system software placement in modern datacenters, unlocking new opportunities for efficiency and scalability.
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PageFlex: Flexible and Efficient User-space Delegation of Linux Paging Policies with eBPF
Kan Wu
Zhiyuan Guo
Suli Yang
Rajath Shashidhara
Wei Xu
Alex Snoeren
Kim Keeton
2025
Preview abstract
To increase platform memory efficiency, hyperscalers like Google and Meta transparently demote “cold” application data to cheaper cost-per-byte memory tiers like compressed memory and NVMe SSDs. These systems rely on standard kernel paging policies and mechanisms to maximize the achievable memory savings without hurting application performance. Although the literature promises better policies, implementing and deploying them within the Linux kernel
is challenging. Delegating policies and mechanisms to user space, through userfaultfd or library-based approaches, incurs overheads and may require modifying application code. We present PageFlex, a framework for delegating Linux paging policies to user space with minimal overhead and full compatibility with existing real-world deployments. PageFlex uses eBPF to delegate policy decisions while providing low-overhead access to in-kernel memory state and access information, thus balancing flexibility and performance. Additionally, PageFlex supports different paging strategies for distinct memory regions and application phases. We show that
PageFlex can delegate existing kernel-based policies with little (< 1%) application slowdown, effectively realizing the benefits of state-of-the-art policies like Hyperbolic caching and Leap prefetching, and unlocking application-specific benefits through region- and phase-aware policy specialization.
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