Introducing Project Naiad and Differential Dataflow

  • Martin Abadi, Microsoft; Rebecca Isaacs, Microsoft; Michael Isard, Microsoft; Frank McSherry, Microsoft; Derek Murray, Microsoft

Naiad, now available for download, is an investigation of data-parallel dataflow computation in the spirit of Dryad and DryadLINQ, but with a focus on incremental computation. Naiad introduces a new computational model, differential dataflow, operating over collections of differences rather than collections of records, and resulting in very efficient implementations of programming patterns that are expensive in existing systems.