Computer Science Distinguished Lecture by Kimberly Keeton (Google)

Dr. Kimberly Keeton (Principal Software Engineer, Google) will be presenting next in our distinguished lecture series on Nov. 6th.  The talks are free and open to everyone.  No registration is required.

Location:  Fred Kaiser Building (2332 Main Mall), Room 2020/2030

Title:  Not Your Grandparents’ Memory System

Abstract:

Virtual memory, invented in the 1960s, has been tremendously successful and has served us well in the last 60 years. However, 60 years in computing is ancient history, and many early assumptions have fundamentally changed or vanished, and new challenges have arisen. Thus, in 2025, it’s worthwhile to reexamine how memory systems have changed and how memory management should adapt to these changes. In this talk, we examine several trends and their implications on memory systems. First, the migration of computation to data centers and the cloud has changed the question that memory management must answer, from how to minimize cache misses in a server’s fixed-size memory to how to minimize memory usage while satisfying application performance targets to facilitate cluster-wide management. This shift requires a rethinking of historical algorithms and evaluation methods. Second, the increasing cost of DRAM has led to tiered memory systems, prompting questions about how these systems should be architected, managed and evaluated. Finally, the increasing heterogeneity of compute and memory technologies means that memories are no longer strict hierarchies, leading to questions about how these resource pools should be managed.