226 research outputs found
Virtual Machine Support for Many-Core Architectures: Decoupling Abstract from Concrete Concurrency Models
The upcoming many-core architectures require software developers to exploit
concurrency to utilize available computational power. Today's high-level
language virtual machines (VMs), which are a cornerstone of software
development, do not provide sufficient abstraction for concurrency concepts. We
analyze concrete and abstract concurrency models and identify the challenges
they impose for VMs. To provide sufficient concurrency support in VMs, we
propose to integrate concurrency operations into VM instruction sets.
Since there will always be VMs optimized for special purposes, our goal is to
develop a methodology to design instruction sets with concurrency support.
Therefore, we also propose a list of trade-offs that have to be investigated to
advise the design of such instruction sets.
As a first experiment, we implemented one instruction set extension for
shared memory and one for non-shared memory concurrency. From our experimental
results, we derived a list of requirements for a full-grown experimental
environment for further research
The economics of garbage collection
This paper argues that economic theory can improve our understanding of memory management. We introduce the allocation curve, as an analogue of the demand curve from microeconomics. An allocation curve for a program characterises how the amount of garbage collection activity required during its execution varies in relation to the heap size associated with that program. The standard treatment of microeconomic demand curves (shifts and elasticity) can be applied directly and intuitively to our new allocation curves. As an application of this new theory, we show how allocation elasticity can be used to control the heap growth rate for variable sized heaps in Jikes RVM
Deploying active objects onto multicore
The performance of a program on multicore platform crucially depends on the
scheduling of its tasks; existing high-level programming languages, however,
offer limited control over scheduling. In this thesis, we develop Cacoj as an
extensible tool set to transform Creolās active concurrent objects into Java to
be deployed on multicore through standard Java Runtime Environment. The
concurrent object paradigm is a promising trend for multicore programming
because each object may conceptually encapsulate a processor. Cacoj introduces
a higher-level abstraction of concurrency API and a Creol compiler in which
the translated object in Java takes control over the scheduling of the incoming
messages through a per-object approach in contrast with current mainstream
trend. Cacoj brings about the required grounds to extend Creol syntax to
additionally specify different levels of priority and integrate them into the notion
of active concurrent objects
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