Description:

Student become familiar - theoretically and practically - with runtime systems and virtual machines for various programming languages.

Contents:

1. Runtime for C/C++, static vs. dynamic linking, position independent code, memory management.
2. Calling conventions, system calls, signals and exceptions.
3. Virtual machines for high-level languages: JVM, MSIL, Squeak, SELF.
4. Organization of object heap. Object table. Immediate values.
5. Memory management, basic garbage collection methods.
6. Bytecode and its interpretation.
7. Just-in-time compilations, method lookup optimizations techniques.
8. Advanced optimization techniques: inlining, custom-compilation. SELF SIC.
9. Thread implementation. Green vs. Native threads.
10. JVM: mapping of threads and synchonization primitives to OS resources.
11. Exceptions - implementation in C++, JVM, Smalltalk.
12. Security mechanisms in VMs. Verification of the bytecode. Security Manager.
13. Foreign function calls. Cross-language calls.
14. VM Bootstrap. metacircular VM.

Seminar contents:

1. TBD.

Recommended literature:

1. Smith, J., Nair, R. ''Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes''. Morgan Kaufmann, 2005. ISBN 1558609105.

Abbreviations used:

Semester:

• W ... winter semester (usually October - February)
• S ... spring semester (usually March - June)
• W,S ... both semesters

Mode of completion of the course:

• A ... Assessment (no grade is given to this course but credits are awarded. You will receive only P (Passed) of F (Failed) and number of credits)
• GA ... Graded Assessment (a grade is awarded for this course)
• EX ... Examination (a grade is awarded for this course)
• A, EX ... Examination (the award of Assessment is a precondition for taking the Examination in the given subject, a grade is awarded for this course)

Weekly load (hours per week):

• P ... lecture
• C ... seminar
• L ... laboratory
• R ... proseminar
• S ... seminar