Abstract:

Many systems research projects now target managed runtime environments (MRE) because they provide better productivity and safety compared to native environments. Still, developing and optimizing an MRE is a tedious task that requires many years of development. Although MREs share some common functionalities, such as a Just In Time Compiler or a Garbage Collector, this opportunity for sharing has not been yet exploited in implementing MREs. This thesis describes and evaluates VMKit, a first attempt to build a common substrate that eases the development and experimentation of high-level MREs and systems mechanisms. VMKit has been successfully used to build two MREs, a Java Virtual Machine and a Common Language Runtime, as well as a a new system mechanism that provides better security in the context of service-oriented architectures. We describe the lessons learnt in implementing such a common infrastructure from a performance and an ease of development standpoint. The performance of VMKit are reasonable compared to industrial MREs, and the high-level MREs are only 20,000 lines of code. Our new system mechanism only requires the addition of 600 lines of code in VMKit, and is a significant step towards better dependable systems.

Bibtex:

@PhdThesis{geoffray:phd,
        author = {N. Geoffray},
        title = { Fostering Systems Research with Managed Runtimes },
        schoold = {Universit\'e Pierre et Marie Curie},
        year = {2009},
        address = {Paris, France},
        month = {September},
}

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