Helix RPC 🧬

The Unified Multi-Protocol Meta-Framework for Modern Microservices and AI Inference.
Seamlessly unifying gRPC, Thrift, and JSON/REST under a single high-performance runtime.

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🧬 What is Helix RPC?

Helix RPC is not a new competing transport protocol. Instead, it is a unified multi-protocol meta-framework designed to run on top of your existing schemas and systems.

By utilizing a Same-Port Multiplexer and Zero-Allocation Transpilers, Helix sniffs, routes, and transcodes incoming traffic (gRPC over HTTP/2, legacy Apache Thrift compact/binary, or HTTP/JSON REST) dynamically, letting them coexist seamlessly in your cluster.

Why Helix?

• Unified Multi-Protocol Server: Accept gRPC, Thrift, HTTP/JSON REST, gRPC-Web, and SSE on a single TCP port.
• Zero-Downtime Migration: Maintain legacy clients and migrate backend services gradually without writing translators or deploying sidecar proxies.
• Direct Kernel Bypass: Automatically bypasses the TCP/IP stack using eBPF Sockmaps for co-located microservices on loopback.
• Zero-Copy Views: Memory-slicing encoders/decoders in Go, Rust, Python, Node.js, Java, and C++ consume up to 70% less memory under high throughput.

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🚀 Performance & Packages

Helix RPC has been benchmarked against industry standards for HTTP/1.1 JSON REST workloads under high concurrency (100 concurrent connections): - 16.8× faster than FastAPI (130,993 req/sec vs 7,811 req/sec) - Matches raw Go net/http within 2% — proving our multi-protocol sniffing and transcoding layers add essentially zero overhead.

Read the full reproducible Performance Benchmarks.

Install the Runtime Packages:

# Go
go get github.com/helixrpc/helix-rpc/runtime-go

# Rust
cargo add helix-rt

# Python
pip install helix-rt
pip install "helix-rt[tensor]" # For zero-copy numpy support

# Node.js
npm install helix-rt-node

# Java (Maven)
<dependency>
  <groupId>io.helixrpc</groupId>
  <artifactId>helix-rt</artifactId>
</dependency>

# C++ (CMake)
include_directories(helix-rpc/runtimes/cpp/include)

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⚡ Key Features

Feature	Description
Same-Port Sniffer	Sniffs incoming packets to route gRPC, Thrift, HTTP/REST, gRPC-Web, and SSE on one port
Zero-Copy View	Memory-slicing parser views avoid heap copies during serialization
Zero-Allocation Transpiling	Directly translates Protobuf binary to Thrift Compact in-memory
Dynamic Batching	Coalesces highly concurrent individual requests into optimal batches for GPU/LLM backends
eBPF Kernel Bypass	Kernel-level Sockmap redirection for local loopback routing
Single-File Scaffolding	helix-gen init generates schema, stubs, configs, containers, and deployment plans
Hot-Reload Config	helix.json watched and hot-reloaded dynamically for auth, rate limits, and compression

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⚡ Quick Start

1. Install the CLI tool

go install github.com/helixrpc/helix-rpc/compiler/helix-gen@latest

2. Scaffold a new unified service

helix-gen init my-service --lang go
cd my-service

This sets up:

my-service/
├── schema.proto          # Unified IDL schema
├── server/main.go        # Server setup and business handlers
├── generated/            # Sniffers and multi-protocol stubs
├── helix.json            # Dynamic hot-reload configuration file
└── Makefile              # Commands for local build, test, and container run

3. Write your handler (the only code you write)

// server/main.go
server.RegisterMethod("/v1.ModelService/Predict", runtime.MethodInfo{
    Handler: func(ctx context.Context, req interface{}) (interface{}, error) {
        // Core business logic goes here
        return &PredictResponse{Completion: "Processed by Helix Unified Server!"}, nil
    },
})

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📦 Dynamic Configuration (helix.json)

Tweak system behaviors at runtime without restarting your instances:

{
  "host": "0.0.0.0",
  "port": 8080,
  "disable_gzip": false,        // Per-message compression toggle
  "disable_deadline": false,    // Timeout propagation toggle
  "rate_limit_rate": 200.0,     // Token-bucket refill rate
  "rate_limit_burst": 20,
  "enable_jwt_auth": true,       // Live JWT authentication
  "jwt_secret": "my-secret-key"
}