SHF: Medium: Collaborative Research: Micro-Virtual Machines for Managed Languages: Abstraction, contained

SHF：媒介：协作研究：托管语言的微型虚拟机：抽象，包含

• 批准号: 1832624
• 负责人: J. Eliot Moss
• 金额: $ 26.16万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-12 至 2020-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832624&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Medium; Collaborative; Research; Micro

Title: Micro Virtual Machines for Managed Languages: Abstraction, containedA large fraction of today's software is written in managed languages. These languages increase software productivity by supporting programming at a very high level, hiding the complexity of modern computer hardware and operating systems. Examples include JavaScript, PHP, Objective-C, Java, C#, Python, and Ruby. These languages have great economic importance. Unfortunately, most of these languages are inefficient, imposing overheads as large as a factor of fifty compared to orthodox language choices such as C. The broader impacts of this research are two-fold: (1) Since managed languages are increasingly becoming economic linchpins, deployed in the engine rooms of global e-commerce platforms and Internet applications (including those of key software companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft), improving the reliability and performance of these managed language platforms will lead to economic efficiencies as well as resource efficiencies in the form of reduced power costs to data centers and improved battery lifetime on mobile devices;(2) Concerning human diversity in the computing field, the research will engage undergraduates from under-represented groups, and encourage them to pursue graduate school and careers in computing and research.This research project is defining, developing, evaluating, and refining the essential components of a new foundation layer for managed language implementation. In doing so, it addresses a key source of systemic inefficiency, by pioneering the "micro virtual machine" (microVM) as an efficient high-performance substrate for managed language implementation. The relationship between a microVM and existing managed language implementations is analogous to that between an operating system micro kernel and monolithic operating systems such as Linux. The microVM captures the insight that there exists a well-defined foundation common to most modern languages that can take responsibility for fundamental abstractions over hardware, concurrency, and memory. By isolating and exposing this substrate, the microVM embodies state-of-the-art base technology available to language implementers while isolating them from the pernicious complexities of these abstractions, freeing them to focus on all-important language-specific optimizations. The research is enabling more efficient software and a distinctly sharper focus for language implementation research and development. The intellectual merits of the research are: (1) Researching and identifying, via prototyping and evaluation, the right microVM abstractions, allowing clean separation of low-level language-neutral and high-level language-specific concerns, capturing the core behaviors, while also admitting high-performance language implementations; (2) Generating secondary research challenges, especially with regard to the effective and efficient combination of abstractions for hardware, concurrency, and memory; and (3) Creating a viable target for formal verification because the microVM has a relatively small code base, thus taking one step on the way towards trustworthy subsystems for assurance of managed software.

标题：托管语言的微型虚拟机：抽象，包含当今的软件很大一部分是用托管语言编写的。这些语言通过支持非常高水平的编程、隐藏现代计算机硬件和操作系统的复杂性来提高软件生产力。示例包括 JavaScript、PHP、Objective-C、Java、C#、Python 和 Ruby。这些语言具有巨大的经济重要性。不幸的是，大多数这些语言效率低下，与 C 等正统语言选择相比，开销高达 50 倍。这项研究的更广泛影响有两个方面：(1) 由于托管语言日益成为经济关键，部署在全球电子商务平台和互联网应用程序的机房（包括亚马逊、谷歌、Facebook、苹果、甲骨文和微软等主要软件公司的机房），提高这些托管语言平台的可靠性和性能将导致经济效益以及通过降低数据中心的电力成本和延长移动设备的电池寿命来提高资源效率；(2) 关于计算领域的人类多样性，该研究将吸引来自代表性不足群体的本科生，并鼓励他们攻读研究生和该研究项目正在定义、开发、评估和完善托管语言实现的新基础层的基本组件。在此过程中，它率先将“微虚拟机”（microVM）作为托管语言实现的高效高性能基础，解决了系统效率低下的一个关键根源。 microVM 和现有托管语言实现之间的关系类似于操作系统微内核和 Linux 等单片操作系统之间的关系。 microVM 捕捉到了这样的见解：存在大多数现代语言所共有的明确定义的基础，可以负责硬件、并​​发性和内存的基本抽象。通过隔离和暴露这个底层，microVM 体现了语言实现者可用的最先进的基础技术，同时将他们与这些抽象的有害复杂性隔离开来，使他们能够专注于所有重要的特定于语言的优化。该研究正在实现更高效的软件，并更加明确地关注语言实现的研究和开发。该研究的智力优点是：（1）通过原型设计和评估，研究和识别正确的 microVM 抽象，从而能够清楚地分离低级语言中性问题和高级语言特定问题，捕获核心行为，同时还承认高性能语言实现； (2) 产生二次研究挑战，特别是在硬件、并发和内存抽象的有效和高效组合方面； (3) 由于 microVM 的代码库相对较小，因此为形式验证创建一个可行的目标，从而在迈向可信赖的子系统以保证托管软件的道路上迈出了一步。