Episode 9: Garbage Collection and Transactional Memory

Guest: Dan Grossman

Host: Markus Völter

Programming languages researcher Dan Grossman from the University of Washington works on making programs safe in the context of shared memory and multi-core processors. Such research operates both at the language level and at the level of the hardware, which gives researchers such as Grossman a wide perspective on the techniques we use in building safe, reliable software systems.

At ooPSLA, Grossman will deliver an essay titled The Transactional Memory / Garbage Collection Analogy, which offers an intriguing analogy: transactional memory is to shared memory concurrency as garbage collection is to memory management. An essay is a different sort of paper that ooPSLA offers. Grossman won't break new technical ground in his talk; instead he will offer a new perspective on topics that we all deal with and explore the implications of thinking in this new way.

Listen to this podcast to hear Markus Völter of SE Radio chat with Dan about shared memory concurrency, memory management, and how thinking about the relationship between them can enrich our understanding of both -- and how this can improve the way we build software.