Next generation garbage collection: discovery, design, and development. This project aims to improve the performance of programming languages used by millions of Australians every day, such as Java, JavaScript and PHP by developing improved memory-management algorithms. These languages use what is referred to as “garbage collection” to ensure memory is managed without data loss, but do so conservatively and consequently cause performance challenges and energy overheads. This project expects to p ....Next generation garbage collection: discovery, design, and development. This project aims to improve the performance of programming languages used by millions of Australians every day, such as Java, JavaScript and PHP by developing improved memory-management algorithms. These languages use what is referred to as “garbage collection” to ensure memory is managed without data loss, but do so conservatively and consequently cause performance challenges and energy overheads. This project expects to provide these languages with improved memory-management algorithms, and provides researchers and industry with a framework for innovation. This project will enable safe software that is more efficient on today's hardware and able to exploit emerging hardware. This project should lead to better performance and energy savings for server applications, phones, watches, and smart appliances, while ensuring memory safety.Read moreRead less
Towards High-performance and Fault-tolerant Distributed Java Implementations. Java Virtual Machines form an important part of the web and business
server market. Distributed Java Virtual Machines have the potential to
make a significant contribution to industries that utilize this
technology. An attractive platform for this purpose is the
cluster, a highly cost-effective and scalable parallel computer
model. However, realizing on such a platform a high performance virtual
machine implem ....Towards High-performance and Fault-tolerant Distributed Java Implementations. Java Virtual Machines form an important part of the web and business
server market. Distributed Java Virtual Machines have the potential to
make a significant contribution to industries that utilize this
technology. An attractive platform for this purpose is the
cluster, a highly cost-effective and scalable parallel computer
model. However, realizing on such a platform a high performance virtual
machine implementation tolerant to hardware and software faults, and
having efficient memory utilization, presents many challenging research
issues. This project will address these issues by extending a highly
efficient and extensible Java implementation to be aware of its cluster
environment.
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Soundness-guided security analysis for android applications. This project aims to develop a soundness-guided programme analysis to mitigate security threats caused by reflection and dynamic class loading in Android apps, without compromising precision and scalability. Both dynamic code update techniques are widely used in benign and malware apps, but state-of-the-art malware analysis tools ignore or mishandle them, missing security threats and vulnerabilities. The resulting open-source security ....Soundness-guided security analysis for android applications. This project aims to develop a soundness-guided programme analysis to mitigate security threats caused by reflection and dynamic class loading in Android apps, without compromising precision and scalability. Both dynamic code update techniques are widely used in benign and malware apps, but state-of-the-art malware analysis tools ignore or mishandle them, missing security threats and vulnerabilities. The resulting open-source security analysis tool will allow software industries and enterprises (from national security, finance, banking to healthcare, retail, telecommunications) to test their mobile software effectively for code defects or security threats early at software development time at significantly reduced cost.Read moreRead less
Micro Compilers: An Extensible Compiler Architecture for Increased Flexibility and Safety. Programming languages specialised to a particular application domain can cut software development costs and reduce programming errors. Unfortunately, most application domains cannot sustain the costly development and maintenance of the specialised compilers required to implement specialised languages. We address this problem by introducing a novel customisable compiler architecture that can be adapted to ....Micro Compilers: An Extensible Compiler Architecture for Increased Flexibility and Safety. Programming languages specialised to a particular application domain can cut software development costs and reduce programming errors. Unfortunately, most application domains cannot sustain the costly development and maintenance of the specialised compilers required to implement specialised languages. We address this problem by introducing a novel customisable compiler architecture that can be adapted to specialised languages and other special-purpose compiler requirements. Customisable compilers are especially important to a country like Australia that has only limited resources for special purpose developments. Moreover, we will train students at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the area of programming languages and compilers.Read moreRead less
Finding concurrency bugs in multithreaded software. This project aims to develop sound and practical techniques for detecting and eliminating concurrency bugs for object-oriented languages like Java, enabled by a new model for concurrent effects. The expected outcome is a novel technology that will significantly improve the safety, productivity and efficiency of large-scale concurrent programming.
A Compositional Model for Verifying and Programming Ecologies of Smart Internet Devices. Emerging in 21st century computing is what we perceive as device ecologies, or collections of devices that can exhibit smart behaviour, automate tasks, interact synergistically with one another, with users and Internet resources, and provide aid and value in daily life and work. Device ecologies will be seen in areas as diverse as e-commerce, health care, home automation, office automation, manufacturing, an ....A Compositional Model for Verifying and Programming Ecologies of Smart Internet Devices. Emerging in 21st century computing is what we perceive as device ecologies, or collections of devices that can exhibit smart behaviour, automate tasks, interact synergistically with one another, with users and Internet resources, and provide aid and value in daily life and work. Device ecologies will be seen in areas as diverse as e-commerce, health care, home automation, office automation, manufacturing, and defense. This project will develop a novel model and language for analyzing and programming device ecologies. This will be an Australian contribution towards techniques for constructing advanced applications that work over the computing infrastructure of the future.Read moreRead less
Verified concurrent memory management on modern processors. This project aims to formally verify automatic memory managers in the presence of concurrency and the weakly ordered memory of modern processors. A new framework for verifying memory managers, reusable for a wide range of managed programming languages, target hardware, policies, and algorithms will be developed. Expected technical outcomes include improved techniques to ensure trustworthiness of the foundations on which critical softwar ....Verified concurrent memory management on modern processors. This project aims to formally verify automatic memory managers in the presence of concurrency and the weakly ordered memory of modern processors. A new framework for verifying memory managers, reusable for a wide range of managed programming languages, target hardware, policies, and algorithms will be developed. Expected technical outcomes include improved techniques to ensure trustworthiness of the foundations on which critical software infrastructures are built. This will significantly enhance the security of public and private cyber assets, and deliver applications that are more robust and trustworthy, across a range of critical infrastructure such as transportation, communication, energy and defence.Read moreRead less
Automating data placement and movement for explicitly managed memory hierarchies. Efficient management of explicitly managed memory hierarchies is essential, making a difference often by one order of magnitude in performance. Compiler-directed techniques promise to take the burden of memory management from the programmer and enable significant performance potential for a broader community, resulting in higher productivity.
Portable High-Performance Computing Based on Flattening and Fusion. We aim at simplifying the development and improving the portability of computing intensive applications, such as those from computational science and engineering, which are of growing scientific and economic relevance (e.g., drug synthesis, virtual wind tunnel, and geologic surveys). Our focus is on achieving portable high-performance for a particularly expressive high-level notation supporting irregular algorithms (like sparse ....Portable High-Performance Computing Based on Flattening and Fusion. We aim at simplifying the development and improving the portability of computing intensive applications, such as those from computational science and engineering, which are of growing scientific and economic relevance (e.g., drug synthesis, virtual wind tunnel, and geologic surveys). Our focus is on achieving portable high-performance for a particularly expressive high-level notation supporting irregular algorithms (like sparse matrices and hierarchical N-body codes). We will develop a set of program transformations and integrate them into a compiler implementing an aggressive fusion strategy optimising for the memory hierarchy. We do not propose a new programming language, but work within an existing one.Read moreRead less
Securing systems against code-reuse attacks with modular pointer analysis. This project aims to build secure defences against code-reuse attacks in large-scale C++ applications with millions of lines of code, by enforcing control flow integrity with modular pointer analysis. The state-of-the-art mitigation techniques that are deployed in mainstream computer operating systems can all be bypassed by advanced code-reuse attacks, resulting in security exploits in all major web browsers. The outcomes ....Securing systems against code-reuse attacks with modular pointer analysis. This project aims to build secure defences against code-reuse attacks in large-scale C++ applications with millions of lines of code, by enforcing control flow integrity with modular pointer analysis. The state-of-the-art mitigation techniques that are deployed in mainstream computer operating systems can all be bypassed by advanced code-reuse attacks, resulting in security exploits in all major web browsers. The outcomes of this project will be an exploit mitigation technology and an open-source tool that can significantly raise the bar against advanced code-reuse attacks, thereby providing a foundation for eliminating such security threats.Read moreRead less