Memory-safe languages are not merely a popular choice. For many software developers, the alternative is economically untenable given the stakes associated with successful attacks and the cost of mitigating critical exploits in an unsafe language through testing, verification and defensive programming. Unfortunately, while memory management has become more important, it remains a major source of overhead for even the most highly optimized runtimes. In this talk I’ll take a broad look at memory performance and the engineering of high performance garbage collectors. I’ll discuss the MMTk project, how we’ve engineered it to target diverse runtimes with very low overhead, and why a modular approach to memory management will be important to the future of programming language implementation.

My research interests are centered on the challenge of making software run faster and more power-efficiently on modern hardware. My primary interests include: microarchitectural support for managed languages, fast and efficient garbage collection, and the design and implementation of virtual machines. As a backdrop to this I have a longstanding interest in role of sound methodology and infrastructure in successful research innovation.