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：用于托管语言的微型虚拟机：抽象，包含当今软件的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级别的编程来提高软件生产力，隐藏了现代计算机硬件和操作系统的复杂性。示例包括JavaScript、PHP、JavaScript-C、Java、C#、Python和Ruby。这些语言具有重要的经济意义。不幸的是，这些语言中的大多数都是低效的，与正统的语言选择（如C）相比，它们的开销高达50倍。这项研究的更广泛影响是双重的：（1）由于托管语言日益成为经济的关键，部署在全球电子商务平台和互联网应用的引擎室中，（包括亚马逊、谷歌、Facebook、苹果、甲骨文和微软等主要软件公司的软件），提高这些受管语言平台的可靠性和性能将以降低数据中心的电力成本的形式带来经济效率和资源效率（2）考虑到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，并鼓励他们在计算和研究方面继续研究生院和职业生涯。该研究项目正在定义，开发，评估和改进托管语言实现的新基础层的基本组件。在这样做的过程中，它解决了系统效率低下的一个关键来源，通过开创性的“微虚拟机”（microVM）作为一个有效的高性能基板托管语言的实现。微VM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诸如Linux之类的单片操作系统之间的关系。microVM捕捉到了这样一种洞察力，即大多数现代语言都有一个定义良好的基础，可以负责硬件，并发和内存的基本抽象。通过隔离和公开这个底层，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语言特定优化。这项研究使更高效的软件成为可能，并使语言实现研究和开发的重点更加突出。本研究的学术价值在于：（1）通过原型设计和评估，研究和识别正确的microVM抽象，允许底层语言无关和高层语言特定关注点的清晰分离，捕获核心行为，同时也允许高性能的语言实现;（2）产生次级研究挑战，特别是关于硬件、并发和内存的抽象的有效和高效组合;以及（3）为形式验证创建可行的目标，因为微VM具有相对小的代码库，从而在通往用于保证托管软件的可信子系统的道路上迈出了一步。