Abstract

This talk is a progress report on a framework with three contributions:

1. Very lightweight threads obtained by CPS transforming bytecode. The threads scale thrice as better compared to Erlang (the Concurrency Oriented Language du jour) and context switch faster 1000x than Java threads.

2. Kilim enforces isolation between tasks. Programmer supplied annotations (similar to linear type systems) help constrain pointer aliasing in data structures exchanged through messages. This scheme achieves isolation without copying (unlike RMI ), allows mutation (linearly, one task at a time) and is more flexible than uniqueness type schemes. There is no need for mutexes, semaphores and synchronized.

3. Existing constructs and classes (arrays, java collection classes, immutable classes) are accommodated; there is no dependence on class level annotations alone. An intra-procedural data flow analysis tracks reference usage.

The talk will focus more on the latter two points.