Behaviour-Oriented Concurrency in Verona: Simple, Safe and Speedy

Speaker: Tobias Wrigstad, Uppsala University

Abstract: Behaviour-oriented Concurrency is a new concurrency paradigm inspired by the actor model, join calculus and structural lock correlation. Programs in behaviour-oriented concurrency are expressed as tasks joining on data organised into isolated regions. Akin to actor-based concurrency, data is always accessed by a single thread of control, but in contrast to actor-based concurrency, data is decoupled from specific threads of control. Through a combination of region isolation, which can be guaranteed statically and dynamically, and scheduling, behaviour-oriented concurrency guarantees data-race freedom and deadlock-freedom and can be implemented efficiently. In this talk, I will introduce behaviour-oriented concurrency, show how behaviour-oriented concurrency enables expression of different happens-before relations in programs, and show a type system for region isolation that guarantees data-race freedom. If time permits, I will also show how the same type system enables efficient memory management with performance control.

Biography: Tobias Wrigstad is a full professor in computing science at Uppsala University. His main areas of interest are design and implementation of programming languages (e.g. memory management, concurrency, type systems) and teaching (programming, software engineering and mastery learning). He was the 2012 recipient of the Dahl-Nygaard Junior Prize for his work on type systems. In 2022, together with Martin Henz, he released a JavaScript adaptation of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming. Dr. Wrigstad currently collaborates with Oracle on memory management in OpenJDK and with Microsoft on the design and implementation of the Verona programming language.

Host:Prof. Matthias Hauswirt