• DocumentCode
    802066
  • Title

    VIM: taming software with hardware

  • Author

    Halpern, Mark

  • Author_Institution
    Berkeley Technol. Group., CA, USA
  • Volume
    36
  • Issue
    10
  • fYear
    2003
  • Firstpage
    21
  • Lastpage
    25
  • Abstract
    The computing world already agrees that software should never be written more than once. The goal of reusable software is widely shared, and developers have undertaken many projects to realize it. I applaud these efforts, and I have also attempted to contribute to them, but I now propose something more radical:my contention is that much software doesn´t need to be written even once - particularly software devoted to the task of memory management. I propose that we make unnecessary all the software dedicated to this task by giving programmers so much physical memory that they can work as if they had infinite memory-virtual infinite memory. This proposal rests on two main points. First, I estimate that nearly half the code produced is directly or indirectly dedicated to memory management. If this claim seems surprising, note that what I call memory management software is not just that portion explicitly dubbed memory management by its authors, but all the code that exists solely because memory is a critical resource. Second, I contend that we could replace all that software with physical memory, and we would profit greatly from doing so.
  • Keywords
    virtual storage; memory management. software; programmers; reusable software; virtual infinite memory; Computer network management; Hardware; Memory management; Programming profession; Resource management; Software debugging; Software performance; Software reusability; Software tools; Technology management;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Journal_Title
    Computer
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • ISSN
    0018-9162
  • Type

    jour

  • DOI
    10.1109/MC.2003.1236467
  • Filename
    1236467