PhD research
Dr. Dre
I successfully defended my PhD last week -- you can find a copy of my PhD dissertation on my resume page. As Dries is derived from Andre, and Dre is short for Andre, you can call me Dr. Dre now. ;-)
On Monday, I'll be packing up my desk at Ghent University, and as of Tuesday, I'll turn full-time to my hobby for the first time in seven years. I fully expect that to be a whole lot of hard work, but I'm really looking forward to finally being able to unleash my raw passion and energy in a very focused manner.
I wish to express my sincere thanks to my two advisers, Prof. Koen De Bosschere and Prof. Lieven Eeckhout for offering me the chance to be part of their research group and for having been extraordinary mentors. I'd also like to thank my colleagues at Ghent University who provided an enjoyable research environment and who have helped me understand how to do research. Thanks!
Public PhD defense
In exactly two weeks, I have my public PhD defense.
Title
Profiling Techniques for Performance Analysis and Optimization of Java Applications
Abstract
As Java applications become more complex and as virtualization becomes more important, we need to investigate profiling techniques that combine information captured at different layers of the execution stack. We present three novel profiling techniques. The central attribute of these contributions is that they link information gathered at different levels of the execution stack, and that this information is used to gather more complete profiles. By collecting information at the micro-processor level, we have profile information that is more accurate, faster to obtain, or that was otherwise not available. We show that these advances in profiling techniques lead to better understanding of program behavior and faster executing Java applications.
Logistics
The presentation is free to attend for all, but RSVP by e-mail or in the comments. It starts at 16:00h on Thursday, January 24th, and will take place at the Jozef Plateauzaal (Jozef Plateaustraat 22, 9000 Gent).
Sun and Drupal
Sun Microsystems has been active in the Drupal community and recently gave a presentation at DrupalCon Barcelona as well as helped sponsor Drupal events. Recently, Sun also made a second hardware donation to the Drupal Association: a SunFire X4200 to support the Drupal.org infrastructure. The first hardware donation was a Sun Fire V20z back in 2005.
On a related note, I successfully defended my PhD at the internal examination yesterday. This means that I am accepted to defend my PhD in public in January 2008. James Gosling, the inventor of Java and Vice President at Sun Microsystems, was part of my PhD examination committee. In the car to Ghent, we talked about Open Source, Java and Drupal. James knew about Drupal, the OpenOffice extensions site, etc.
I personally thanked James on behalf of the Drupal community for Sun's continued support. Thanks Sun!
James Gosling, the inventor of Java and Vice President at Sun Microsystems. © Sun Microsystems.
The impact of multicore architectures on software
After my internal PhD defense next Thursday, Michael Hind (a member of my PhD dissertation committee) will give a presentation about the impact of multicore architectures on software. Feel free to attend!
Abstract
Mainstream computer vendors have announced two dramatic changes in their future architectures. First, the clock speed and the amount of cache memory per processor will dramatically change. Namely, the exponential increase in clock frequency we've experienced over the past decades will cease to occur, and in some cases processor speeds will decrease. Also, the relative amount of cache memory for a processor will decrease. Second, there will be exponentially increasing number of processor cores on a chip.
These changes present two unprecedented challenges to the software stack:
- How does the software deal with the loss of single threaded performance and cache memory, and
- How does the software utilize the additional capabilities provided by multiple cores on a chip?
In his talk, Michael will argue why these challenges present great opportunities for software optimization and suggest some approaches to address these fundamental problems.
PhD dissertation milestone
I just sent the members of my PhD dissertation committee their copy of my dissertation. Yay!
Writing a PhD dissertation has been a completely new experience, and a challenging one for sure. Writing for weeks on end is hard. However, mailing your PhD dissertation to the members of your PhD dissertation committee is fun, and warrants a blog post.
The title of my PhD dissertation will be Profiling techniques for Java performance analysis and optimization. I'm fortunate to have two of the world's best Java people on my PhD dissertation committee -- James Gosling (the inventor of Java and Vice President at Sun Microsystems) and Michael Hind (Senior Manager of the Programming Technologies Department at IBM Research) -- so I'm looking forward to what they have to say about it.
Next up is my PhD defense. That and getting Drupal 6 out, of course.
Bonjour Montreal
I'm currently in Montreal (Canada) for OOPSLA, where Andy will present our statistically rigorous Java performance evaluation paper and where I'll talk about our work on using hardware performance monitors to drive dynamic compilation of Java applications.
In addition to the PhD related festivities, Drupal rockstar Angie Byron is organizing a Drupal dinner on Tuesday evening. Drupal users unite!
The WIFI at the Hyatt Regency in Montreal sucks monkey balls. I feel incredibly unproductive, cross and out of sync when I wake up in the middle of the night. So much for working the Drupal 6 issue queues ...
The view from my room in the Hyatt Regency.
Dissertation wrestling
Feedback from one of my advisors.