DLS Talk by Kimberly Keeton, Google

Speaker:  Dr. Kimberly Keeton, Principal Software Engineer, Google

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.

Bio:

Dr. Kimberly Keeton is a Principal Software Engineer in the SystemsResearch@Google group. Her recent research focuses on memory management and efficiency, novel memory technologies, and data management. Prior to joining Google, she was a Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs, where she investigated how to improve the manageability, dependability and usability of large-scale storage and information systems, and how these systems can exploit emerging technologies like persistent and disaggregated memory to improve functionality and performance. Kim received her PhD and MS in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley and her BS in Computer Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon. She is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, and has served as program chair for SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys, SIGMETRICS, FAST and DSN Performance and Dependability Symposium. In her spare time, she sings with the Grammy-nominated chorus, Pacific Edge Voices.

Host:  Reto Achermann, UBC Computer Science