Abstract

Barrelfish is a research operating system based on the Multikernel model, an OS structure that treats heterogeneous multi-core systems as a network of independent nodes communicating via message-passing. Arguably, such a system can benefit from high-level programming models such as the Java Virtual Machine, since they can provide a single-system image and facilitate migration of threads between cores, making the system easier to program. This work investigates the core challenges of this approach by bringing up a JVM on Barrelfish. We compare two different implementations, one based on shared memory, the other on message passing (enabling it to run on non-cache coherent systems).

This is a practice talk for work being presented at the 2nd workshop on Systems for Future Multi-core Architectures (SFMA’12) at EuroSys 2012.

Bio: Martin Maas is a first-year PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his B.A. at the Computer Lab in 2011.