Seminar Series: Kenneth B. Kent

Kenneth B. Kent from the University of New Brunswick will be coming to SoCS on Friday, January 9 at 11:00 AM (REYN 312) to give a seminar about Thread Group Based Garbage Collection in a Java Virtual Machine.

Speaker: Dr. Kenneth B. Kent, Professor & Director, IBM Center for Advanced Studies - Atlantic Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

Kenneth B. Kent received BSc degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, and MSc and PhD degrees from University of Victoria, Canada. He is a professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick, and the Director of the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies-Atlantic, Canada. Dr. Kent is also an Honorary Professor at the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. His research interests are Hardware/Software Co-Design, Virtual Machines, Reconfigurable Computing, and Embedded Systems. His research groups are key contributors to widely used software such as the IBM Java Virtual Machine and the VTR (Verilog-To-Routing) FPGA CAD flow.

Title

Thread Group Based Garbage Collection in a Java Virtual Machine

Abstract

Effective memory management in a virtual machine is one of the more fundamental issues that affect performance and suitability for applications. We have developed a simulator that allows the prototyping of new garbage collection techniques in order to compare their performance. The simulator allows the isolation of a garbage collector from other components in a virtual machine to permit in-depth analysis and evaluation of new GC techniques. In this work we show the implementation and the results of a thread local heap generational garbage collector using our simulator. Contrary to other implementations we assign each thread its own heap, instead of dividing the heap into several regions for every thread. Furthermore, thread groups are assigned so that we do not always have to stop the world in order to GC specific regions. This technique has shown an improvement over more traditional techniques depending on the application.

Please RSVP to gradassist@socs.uoguelph.ca if you plan on attending this seminar.