Rubao Lee

lee.rubao@ieee.org

My Ohio State Page: https://engineering.osu.edu/people/lee.11875

About Me

My research focuses on algorithm engineering, computer systems, and database systems.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2008 from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the direction of the incomparable Professor Zhiwei Xu.

Teaching

Tutorials

Hardware Acceleration for Spatial Databases: Building Next-Generation Query Engines Using Ray Tracing Cores

How ray tracing cores can accelerate spatial query engines, from hardware fundamentals and spatial operators to indexing, distance computation, and Apache SedonaDB integration.

Presenters: Rubao Lee, Liang Geng, and Xiaodong Zhang

VLDB 2026 August 31-September 4, 2026 Boston, Massachusetts, USA
ACM SIGSPATIAL 2026 November 3-6, 2026 Riverside, California, USA
Tutorial page: paper, slides, code, and outline →

Honors and Awards

Software Code

Current Project: RTDL: A Domain-Specific Language for Ray Tracing

Parallel Algorithm Package

Parallel Hungarian algorithm (VLDB'26) Hausdorff distance computation (ICS'26) Stable marriage solver (PACT'25) Graph maximum matching (VLDB'25) Tree edit distance computation (VLDB'24)

Ray Tracing Data Systems

RT-accelerated spatial queries in SedonaDB (VLDB'26) Ray tracing database engine (VLDB'26) Spatial indexing library (PPoPP'25) Spatial join accelerator (ICS'24)

GPU Data Systems

Arbitrary-precision queries (ICDE'24) Nested query processing (ICDE'21) GPU graph execution (PPoPP'19) GPU key-value store (VLDB'15) GPU database system (VLDB'13)

Other Code

Asynchronous Datalog engine (SIGMOD'20) Balanced concurrency control (VLDB'16) Spatial Hadoop engine (VLDB'13) SQL-to-MapReduce translator (ICDCS'11)

Publication: Book

Data Management: Interactions with Computer Architecture and Systems
Xiaodong Zhang and Rubao Lee
Cambridge University Press
Book Website | Available on Amazon

Publication: VIP (Very Important Paper)

Software-Defined Software: A Perspective of Machine Learning-Based Software Production (PDF)
Rubao Lee, Hao Wang, Xiaodong Zhang
ICDCS 2018: 2018 IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 1270-1275, July 2, 2018.

Publication: Full Papers (DBLP | Google Scholar)

  1. RobotFD: GPU-Accelerated Fréchet Distance for Robot Path Analysis
    Zhehu Yuan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    IROS 2026: 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, September 27-October 1, 2026, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Accepted · To appear
  2. RayBooster: A Ray Tracing Engine to Accelerate SedonaDB
    Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, Dewey Dunnington, Feng Zhang, Jia Yu, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2026: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 19(12), 3902-3915, 2026.
    PDF | Code
  3. X-Wim: Massive Parallelization of Weighted Matching in Bipartite Graphs
    Dayi Fan, Simon Zhang, Rubao Lee, Hanqi Guo, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2026: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 19(10), 2643-2657, 2026.
    PDF | Code
  4. RayDB: Building Databases with Ray Tracing Cores
    Xuri Shi, Kai Zhang, X. Sean Wang, Xiaodong Zhang, Rubao Lee
    VLDB 2026: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 19(1), 43-55, 2025.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  5. X-HD: Fast Hausdorff Distance Computation with Ray Tracing
    Liang Geng, Zhehu Yuan, Rubao Lee, Fusheng Wang, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICS 2026: Proceedings of International Conference on Supercomputing, July 06-09, 2026, Belfast, United Kingdom.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  6. X-Blossom: Massive Parallelization of Graph Maximum Matching
    Dayi Fan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2025: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 18(10), 3339-3353, 2025.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  7. A Case Study for Ray Tracing Cores: Performance Insights with Breadth-First Search and Triangle Counting in Graphs
    Zhixiong Xiao, Mengbai Xiao, Yuan Yuan, Dongxiao Yu, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    SIGMETRICS 2025: Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems, Vol. 9, No. 2, Article 16 (June 2025).
    DOI | PDF | Code
  8. LibRTS: A Spatial Indexing Library by Ray Tracing
    Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    PPoPP 2025: Proceedings of ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, 2025.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  9. A Stable Marriage Requires a Shared Residence with Low Contention and Mutual Complementarity
    Jiaxin Liu, Rubao Lee, Cathy H. Xia, Xiaodong Zhang
    PACT 2025: 2025 34th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques, 416-430, 2025.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  10. High-Performance Spatial Data Analytics: Systematic R&D for Scale-Out and Scale-Up Solutions from the Past to Now
    Fusheng Wang, Rubao Lee, Dejun Teng, Xiaodong Zhang, Joel Saltz
    VLDB 2024: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 17(12), 4507-4520, 2024.
    DOI | PDF
  11. X-TED: Massive Parallelization of Tree Edit Distance
    Dayi Fan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2024: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 17(7), 1683-1696, 2024.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  12. RTScan: Efficient Scan with Ray Tracing Cores
    Yangming Lv, Kai Zhang, Ziming Wang, Xiaodong Zhang, Rubao Lee, Zhenying He, Yinan Jing, X. Sean Wang
    VLDB 2024: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 17(6), 1460-1472, 2024.
    DOI | PDF
  13. RayJoin: Fast and Precise Spatial Join by Ray Tracing Cores
    Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICS 2024: Proceedings of the 38th ACM International Conference on Supercomputing, June 4-7, 2024, Kyoto, Japan.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  14. UltraPrecise: A GPU-based Framework for Arbitrary-Precision Arithmetic in Database Systems
    Xin Li, Mengbai Xiao, Dongxiao Yu, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDE 2024: Proceedings of the 40th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, May 13-17, 2024, Utrecht, Netherlands.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  15. An RDMA-enabled In-memory Computing Platform for R-tree on Clusters
    Mengbai Xiao, Hao Wang, Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ACM TSAS: ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, 8(2), 1-26, 2022.
    DOI | PDF
  16. The Art of Balance: A RateupDB Experience of Building a CPU/GPU Hybrid Database Product
    Rubao Lee, Minghong Zhou, Chi Li, Shenggang Hu, Jianping Teng, Dongyang Li, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2021: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 14(12), 2999-3013, 2021.
    DOI | PDF
  17. NestGPU: Nested Query Processing on GPU
    Sofoklis Floratos, Mengbai Xiao, Hao Wang, Chengxin Guo, Yuan Yuan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDE 2021: Proceedings of IEEE 37th International Conference on Data Engineering, 1008-1019, April 19-22, 2021, Online.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  18. Automating Incremental and Asynchronous Evaluation for Recursive Aggregate Data Processing
    Qiange Wang, Yanfeng Zhang, Hao Wang, Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang, Ge Yu
    SIGMOD 2020: Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, 2439-2454, June 14-19, 2020, Portland OR, USA.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  19. Catfish: Adaptive RDMA-enabled R-tree for Low Latency and High Throughput
    Mengbai Xiao, Hao Wang, Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, and Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDCS 2019: Proceedings of 39th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 164-175, July 7-9, 2019, Dallas, Texas, USA.
    DOI | PDF
  20. DirectLoad: A Fast Web-Scale Index System Across Large Regional Centers
    An Qin, Mengbai Xiao, Jin Ma, Dai Tan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDE 2019: Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Data Engineering, 1790-1801, April 8-11, Macau SAR, China.
    DOI | PDF
  21. SEP-graph: Finding Shortest Execution Paths for Graph Processing Under a Hybrid Framework On GPU
    Hao Wang, Liang Geng, Rubao Lee, Kaixi Hou, Yanfeng Zhang, Xiaodong Zhang
    PPoPP 2019: Proceedings of the 24th symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, 38-52, February 16-20, 2019, Washington DC, USA.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  22. SQLoop: High Performance Iterative Processing in Data Management
    Sofoklis Floratos, Yanfeng Zhang, Yuan Yuan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDCS 2018: Proceedings of the IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 1039-1051, July 2-5, 2018, Vienna, Austria.
    DOI | PDF
  23. A Low-cost Disk Solution Enabling LSM-tree to Achieve High Performance for Mixed Read/Write Workloads
    Dejun Teng, Lei Guo, Rubao Lee, Feng Chen, Yanfeng Zhang, Siyuan Ma, Xiaodong Zhang
    ACM TOS: ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS), 14(2), pp 15, 2018.
    DOI | PDF
  24. A Distributed In-memory Key-value Store System on Heterogeneous CPU-GPU Cluster
    Kai Zhang, Kaibo Wang, Yuan Yuan, Lei Guo, Rubao Li, Xiaodong Zhang, Bingsheng He, Jiayu Hu, Bei Hua
    VLDB Journal: The International Journal on Very Large Data Bases, 26(5), pp 729-750, 2017.
    DOI | PDF
  25. LSbM-tree: Re-Enabling Buffer Caching in Data Management for Mixed Reads and Writes
    Dejun Teng, Lei Guo, Rubao Lee, Feng Chen, Siyuan Ma, Yanfeng Zhang, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDCS 2017: Proceedings of the IEEE 37th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 68-79, June 5-8, 2017, Atlanta GA, USA.
    DOI | PDF
  26. Feisu: Fast Query Execution over Heterogeneous Data Sources on Large-Scale Clusters
    An Qin, Yuan Yuan, Dai Tan, Pengyu Sun, Xiang Zhang, Hao Cao, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDE 2017: Proceedings of the IEEE 33rd International Conference on Data Engineering, 1173-1182, April 19-22, 2017, San Diego CA, USA.
    DOI | PDF
  27. Spark-GPU: An Accelerated In-Memory Data Processing Engine on Clusters
    Yuan Yuan, Meisam F. Salmi, Yin Huai, Kaibo Wang, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    BigData 2016: Proceedings of 2016 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, 273-283, December 5-8, 2016, Washington DC, USA.
    DOI | PDF
  28. Internal Parallelism of Flash Memory based Solid State Drives
    Feng Chen, Binbing Hou, Rubao Lee
    ACM TOS: ACM Transactions on Storage, 12(3), August 2016.
    DOI | PDF
  29. BCC: Reducing False Aborts in Optimistic Concurrency Control with Low Cost for In-memory Databases
    Yuan Yuan, Kaibo Wang, Rubao Lee, Xiaoning Ding, Jing Xing, Spyros Blanas, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2016: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 9(6), 504-515, 2016.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  30. MegaKV: A Case for GPUs to Maximize the Throughput of In-Memory Key-Value Stores
    Kai Zhang, Kaibo Wang, Yuan Yuan, Lei Guo, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2015: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 8(11), 1226-1237, 2015.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  31. GDM: Device Memory Management for GPGPU Computing
    Kaibo Wang, Xiaoning Ding, Rubao Lee, Shinpei Kato, Xiaodong Zhang
    SIGMETRICS 2014: ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review 42(1), 533-545, 2014.
    DOI | PDF
  32. Major Technical Advancements in Apache Hive
    Yin Huai, Ashutosh Chauhan, Alan Gates, Gunther Hagleitner, Eric Hanson, Owen O’Malley, Jitendra Pandey, Yuan Yuan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    SIGMOD 2014: Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, 1235-1246, June 22-27, 2014, Snowbird UT, USA.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  33. Concurrent Analytical Query Processing with GPUs
    Kaibo Wang, Kai Zhang, Yuan Yuan, Siyuan Ma, Rubao Lee, Xiaoning Ding, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2014: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 7(11), 1011-1022, 2014.
    DOI | PDF
  34. Understanding Insights into the Basic Structure and Essential Issues of Table Placement Methods in Clusters
    Yin Huai, Siyuan Ma, Rubao Lee, Owen O'Malley, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2014: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 6(14), 1750-1761, 2013.
    DOI | PDF
  35. S-CAVE: Effective SSD Caching to Improve Virtual Machine Storage Performance
    Tian Luo, Siyuan Ma, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang, Deng Liu, Li Zhou
    PACT 2013: Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on parallel architectures and compilation techniques, 103-112, September 7-11, 2013, Edinburgh, Scotland.
    DOI | PDF
  36. Hadoop-GIS: A High-Performance Spatial Data Warehousing System over MapReduce (2024 VLDB Test of Time Award)
    Ablimit Aji, Fusheng Wang, Hoang Vo, Rubao Lee, Qiaoling Liu, Xiaodong Zhang, Joel H. Saltz
    VLDB 2013: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 6(11), 1009-1020, 2013.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  37. The Yin and Yang of Processing Data Warehousing Queries on GPU Devices
    Yuan Yuan, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2013: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 6(10), 817-828, 2013.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  38. Accelerating Pathology Image Data Cross Comparison on CPU-GPU Hybrid Systems
    Kaibo Wang, Yin Huai, Rubao Lee, Fusheng Wang, Xiaodong Zhang, Joel H. Saltz
    VLDB 2012: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 5(11), 1543-1554, 2012.
    DOI | PDF
  39. hStorageDB: Heterogeneity-aware Data Management to Exploit the Full Capability of Hybrid Storage Systems
    Tian Luo, Rubao Lee, Michael Mesnier, Feng Chen, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2012: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 5(10), 1076-1087, 2012.
    DOI | PDF
  40. DOT: A Matrix Model for Analyzing, Optimizing and Deploying Software for Big Data Analytics in Distributed Systems
    Yin Huai, Rubao Lee, Simon Zhang, Cathy Honghui Xia, Xiaodong Zhang
    SOCC 2011: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, 1-14, October 26-28, 2011, Cascais, Portugal.
    DOI | PDF
  41. YSmart: Yet another SQL-to-MapReduce Translator (2011 ICDCS Best Paper Award)
    Rubao Lee, Tian Luo, Yin Huai, Fusheng Wang, Yongqiang He, Xiaodong Zhang
    ICDCS 2011: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 25-36, June 20-24, 2011, Minneapolis MN, USA.
    DOI | PDF | Code
  42. RCFile: A Fast and Space-efficient Data Placement Structure in MapReduce-based Warehouse Systems
    Yongqiang He, Rubao Lee, Yin Huai, Zheng Shao, Namit Jain, Xiaodong Zhang, Zhiwei Xu
    ICDE 2011: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Data Engineering, 1199-1208, April 11-16, 2011, Hannover, Germany.
    DOI | PDF
  43. Essential Roles of Exploiting Internal Parallelism of Flash Memory based Solid State Drives in High-Speed Data Processing
    Feng Chen, Rubao Lee, Xiaodong Zhang
    HPCA 2011: Proceedings of IEEE 17th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture, 266-277, February 12-16, 2011, San Antonio TX, USA.
    DOI | PDF
  44. MCC-DB: Minimizing Cache Conflicts in Multi-core Processors for Databases
    Rubao Lee, Xiaoning Ding, Feng Chen, Qingda Lu, Xiaodong Zhang
    VLDB 2009: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment 2(1), 373-384, 2009.
    DOI | PDF
  45. Exploiting Stream Request Locality to Improve Query Throughput of a Data Integration System
    Rubao Lee, Zhiwei Xu
    IEEE TC: IEEE Transactions on Computers 58(10), 1356-1368, 2009.
    DOI | PDF
  46. Request Window: An Approach to Improve Throughput of RDBMS-based Data Integration System by Utilizing Data Sharing Across Concurrent Distributed Queries
    Rubao Lee, Minghong Zhou, Huaming Liao
    VLDB 2007: Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, 1219-1230, September 23-27, 2007, Vienna, Austria.
    DOI | PDF