4 ms·

Mmtk: Memory Management Toolkit

46 points by signa11 4y ago

moloch-hai 4y ago
This is a rare case where naming the language involved in the title text would be helpful.
abnercoimbre 4y ago
It feels like this year's zeitgeist in programming has been on memory management and/or memory safety. Interesting to see there's funding of research even by the government! We produced a 2-hour podcast [0] on this subject recently. You'll get a lot out of it if you want a deep dive into memory strategies -- with programmers applying them now at places like Epic Games, etc. [0] https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/afc72ed0-f05f-4bee-a658-9ad02c0453da https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/afc72ed0-f05f-4bee-a658-...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pavpanchekha 4y ago
Funny seeing this here, as I was just visiting Steve and his students a few days ago as part of my OOPSLA trip. I'm not an expert in this area, but here's my high level understanding: MMtk is an attempt to define a high performance generic interface for garbage collectors. The idea is that a language implementation can use the MMtk API and then plug in want of a number of garbage collectors, including the state of the art collectors like Immix. If you've ever worked with garbage collectors, you know that garbage collector assumptions tend to be hard wired into the language. And given how important low level implementation details are to GC, it's not obvious that am abstract interface would work. But MMtk shows that's possible.
- gjvc 4y ago
  Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote should be required viewing for anyone who considers themselves a serious computerist. https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY
- tsujamin 4y ago
  Whenever I see this pop up I also think of Steve, how randomly the stuff I did on JikesRVM with him has weirdly come back up in my career and also how I royally stuffed up my honours thesis :)
fanf2 4y ago
I wonder how the MMTK compares to the venerable Ravenbrook MPS https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/ https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/ which originated in Harlequin’s programming language implementations, particularly Dylan.
voxl 4y ago
This is in desperate need of a simple LISP example in Rust with at least closures. The only example I see is in C, and the tests are wanting too. I would have to spend a week just to figure out what this really is and isn't, the documentation doesn't help as the first link I tried 404d

46 points by signa11 4y ago

This is a rare case where naming the language involved in the title text would be helpful.

It feels like this year's zeitgeist in programming has been on memory management and/or memory safety. Interesting to see there's funding of research even by the government! We produced a 2-hour podcast [0] on this subject recently. You'll get a lot out of it if you want a deep dive into memory strategies -- with programmers applying them now at places like Epic Games, etc. [0] https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/afc72ed0-f05f-4bee-a658-9ad02c0453da https://handmade.network/podcast/ep/afc72ed0-f05f-4bee-a658-...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pavpanchekha 4y ago

Funny seeing this here, as I was just visiting Steve and his students a few days ago as part of my OOPSLA trip. I'm not an expert in this area, but here's my high level understanding: MMtk is an attempt to define a high performance generic interface for garbage collectors. The idea is that a language implementation can use the MMtk API and then plug in want of a number of garbage collectors, including the state of the art collectors like Immix. If you've ever worked with garbage collectors, you know that garbage collector assumptions tend to be hard wired into the language. And given how important low level implementation details are to GC, it's not obvious that am abstract interface would work. But MMtk shows that's possible.

gjvc 4y ago
Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote should be required viewing for anyone who considers themselves a serious computerist. https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY https://youtu.be/oKg1hTOQXoY
tsujamin 4y ago
Whenever I see this pop up I also think of Steve, how randomly the stuff I did on JikesRVM with him has weirdly come back up in my career and also how I royally stuffed up my honours thesis :)

fanf2 4y ago

I wonder how the MMTK compares to the venerable Ravenbrook MPS https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/ https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/ which originated in Harlequin’s programming language implementations, particularly Dylan.

voxl 4y ago

This is in desperate need of a simple LISP example in Rust with at least closures. The only example I see is in C, and the tests are wanting too. I would have to spend a week just to figure out what this really is and isn't, the documentation doesn't help as the first link I tried 404d