Mozilla Enters "Browser Wars" With Our Trace Compiler

Firefox 3.5 (Beta release out, final release out soon) adopts the trace compilation technique invented by my Ph.D. student Andreas Gal and myself at UC Irvine. In fact, Andreas has been at Mozilla since Summer of 2008 to integrate trace compilation into Firefox's JavaScript compiler. The new JavaScript engine, called "TraceMonkey" is already part of the beta release that can be downloaded from Mozilla.

Ch. Wimmer, M. Cintra, M. Bebenita, M. Chang, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "Phase Detection using Trace Compilation;" accepted for publication in The 7th International Conference on the Principles and Practice of Programming in Java 2009 (PPPJ 2009), Calgary, Alberta; August 2009.

Ch. Kerschbaumer, G. Wagner, Ch. Wimmer, A. Gal, Ch. Steger, and M. Franz; :SlimVM: A Small Footprint Java Virtual Machine for Connected Embedded Systems;" accepted for publication in The 7th International Conference on the Principles and Practice of Programming in Java 2009 (PPPJ 2009), Calgary, Alberta; August 2009.

M. Bebenita, M. Chang, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "Stream-Based Dynamic Compilation for Object-Oriented Languages;" accepted for publication in 47th International Conference on Objects, Models, Components, Patterns (TOOLS-EUROPE 2009), Zurich, Switzerland; June 2009.

A. Gal, B. Eich, M. Shaver, D. Anderson, B. Kaplan. G. Hoare, D. Mandelin, B. Zbarsky, J. Orendorff, J. Ruderman, E. Smith, R. Reitmaier, M. R. Haghighat, M. Bebenita, M. Chang, and M Franz; "Trace-based Just-in-Time Type Specialization for Dynamic Languages;" accepted for publication in Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2009), Dublin, Ireland; June 2009. (34 accepted out of 196 submissions)

B. Salamat, T. Jackson, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "Intrusion Detection Using Parallel Execution and Monitoring of Program Variants in User-Space;" in EuroSys'09, Nürnberg, Germany; April 2009. (25 accepted out of 148 submissions)

M. Franz; "Information-Flow Aware Virtual Machines: Foundations For Trustworthy Computing;" in Cybersecurity Applications and Technologies Conference for Homeland Security (CATCH 2009), Washington, D.C.; March 2009.

E. Yardimci and M. Franz; "Mostly-Static Program Partitioning of Binary Executables;" accepted for publication in ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS).

M. Chang, E. Smith, R. Reitmaier, A. Gal, M. Bebenita, Ch. Wimmer, B. Eich, and M. Franz; "Tracing for Web 3.0: Trace Compilation for the Next Generation Web Applications;" in The 2009 ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE 2009), Washington, D.C.; March 2009.

L. Wang and M. Franz; "Automatic Partitioning of Object-Oriented Programs for Resource-Constrained Mobile Devices with Multiple Distribution Objectives;" in The 14th IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS'08), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, December 2008.

G. Wagner, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "SlimVM: Optimistic Partial Program Loading for Connected Embedded Java Virtual Machines;" in The International Conference on the Principles and Practice on Programming in Java 2008 (PPPJ 2008), Modena, Italy; September 2008. Best Paper Award.

A. Yermolovich, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "Portable Execution of Legacy Binaries on the Java Virtual Machine;" in The International Conference on the Principles and Practice on Programming in Java 2008 (PPPJ 2008), Modena, Italy; September 2008.

A. Gal, Ch. W. Probst, and M. Franz; Java Bytecode Verification via Static Single Assignment Form; in ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Vol. 30, No. 4, Article No. 21, pp. 1-21; July 2008.

E. Yardimci and M. Franz; "Dynamic Parallelization of Binary Executables on Hierarchical Platforms;'' in The Journal of Instruction-Level Parallelism, Vol. 10, Paper 6, ISSN 1942-9525, pp. 1-24; June 2008.

A. Noll, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "CellVM: A Homogeneous Virtual Machine Runtime System for a Heterogeneous Single-Chip Multiprocessor;" in 2008 Workshop on Cell Systems and Applications, Beijing, China; June 2008.

B. Salamat, A. Gal, and M. Franz; "Reverse Stack Execution in a Multi-Variant Execution Environment;" in 2008 Workshop on Compiler and Architectural Techniques for Application Reliability and Security (CATARS'08), Anchorage, Alaska; June 2008.

B. Salamat, A. Gal, T. Jackson, K. Manivannan, G. Wagner, and M. Franz; "Multi-Variant Program Execution: Using Multi-Core Systems to Defuse Buffer-Overflow Vulnerabilities;'' in 2008 International Workshop on Multi-Core Computing Systems (MuCoCoS 2008), Barcelona, Spain; March 2008.

M. Franz; Eliminating Trust From Application Programs By Way Of Software Architecture; in Software Engineering 2008 (SE 2008), Munich, Germany, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) No. 121, GI-Edition, Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, ISBN 978-3-88579-215-4, pp. 112-126; February 2008.

M. Franz; "Understanding and Countering Insider Threats In Software Development;" in P. Kropf, M. Benyoucef, and H. Mili (Eds.), 2008 International Montreal Conference on e-Technologies (MCETECH 2008), Montreal, Canada, IEEE Computer Society, ISBN 0-7695-3082-6, pp. 81-90; January 2008.

D. Chandra and M. Franz; "Fine-Grained Information Flow Analysis and Enforcement in a Java Virtual Machine"; in 23rd Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC 2007), Miami Beach, Florida; December 2007.

Welcome to New Ph.D. Student

David Anderson will join us at Irvine in the Fall. He is a veteran of Mozilla's Firefox group. Welcome!

Funding News

I am very grateful for generous gifts from Sun Microsystems, Google, Mozilla, and Intel that have supported my research in recent years. I have also received substantial support from several different funding agencies of the Federal United States Government.

Sun Microsystems, Inc., unrestricted gift of $80,000, sole beneficiary; May 2009

Google Corporation, unrestricted gift of $50,000, sole beneficiary; January 2008

California MICRO Program and industrial sponsor Sun Microsystems, Inc., "Trace Compilation for a Server Java Virtual Machine"
August 2007 - June 2009, $81,500, sole PI
(waiver of overhead charges applies to the total grant amount)

Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA), "Leveraging Parallel Hardware to Detect, Quarantine, and Repair Malicious Code Injection''
May 2007 – August 2009, $1,020,375, sole PI
(This solicitation drew 265 responses, of which 11, including this one, were funded. Among the 11 funded projects, 4 were from M.I.T. and one each from Carnegie-Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, and UT Austin. UC Irvine was the only university in the competition to receive a grant awarded to a sole Principal Investigator.)

National Science Foundation: "MLS-VM: Design and Implementation of a Next-Generation Information-Centric Target Platform for Trusted Internet Computing"
September 2006 - August 2009, $400,000, sole PI

National Science Foundation: "Virtual-Machine Techniques for Resource-Constrained Devices: Reconciling Reliability With Reusability and Low Development Costs in the Embedded Systems Space''
July 2006 - June 2009, $300,000, sole PI

Mozilla Corporation, unrestricted gift of $85,000, sole beneficiary; May 2007

Thank You!

Congratulations

Babak Salamat defended his Ph.D. in June 2009 with the thesis Multi-Variant Execution: Run-Time Defense Against Malicious Code Injection Attacks. Babak will join Yahoo in the Summer.

Lei Wang defended her Ph.D. in June 2009 with the thesis Automatic Program Partitioning to Alleviate Resource Constraints of Object-Oriented Applications. Lei will continue her position at Microsoft.

Mason Chang defended his M.S. in May 2009 with the thesis Tracing for Web 3.0 -- Trace Compilation for the Next Generation Web Applications.

Alex Yermolovich submitted his M.S. thesis Efficient Execution of Binary and Guest Virtual Machines on Platform Independent Host Virtual Machines in June 2009.

Michael Bebenita, Mason Chang, Todd Jackson, and Gregor Wagner all advanced to candidacy.