{"id":977097,"date":"2023-10-18T02:32:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T09:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=977097"},"modified":"2025-11-26T03:40:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T11:40:59","slug":"reference-capabilities-for-flexible-memory-management","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/reference-capabilities-for-flexible-memory-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Reference Capabilities for Flexible Memory Management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Verona is a concurrent object-oriented programming language that organises all the objects in a program<br \/>\ninto a forest of isolated regions. Memory is managed locally for each region, so programmers can control<br \/>\na program\u2019s memory use by adjusting objects\u2019 partition into regions, and by setting each region\u2019s memory<br \/>\nmanagement strategy. A thread can only mutate (allocate, deallocate) objects within one active region \u2014 its<br \/>\n\u201cwindow of mutability\u201d. Memory management costs are localised to the active region, ensuring overheads<br \/>\ncan be predicted and controlled. Moving the mutability window between regions is explicit, so code can be<br \/>\nexecuted wherever it is required, yet programs remain in control of memory use. An ownership type system<br \/>\nbased on reference capabilities enforces region isolation, controlling aliasing within and between regions,<br \/>\nyet supporting objects moving between regions and threads. Data accesses never need expensive atomic<br \/>\noperations, and are always thread-safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Verona is a concurrent object-oriented programming language that organises all the objects in a program into a forest of isolated regions. Memory is managed locally for each region, so programmers can control a program\u2019s memory use by adjusting objects\u2019 partition into regions, and by setting each region\u2019s memory management strategy. A thread can only mutate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"OOPSLA2","msr_journal":"Proc. ACM Program. 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There is a real drive in the industry to make memory safety vulnerabilities a thing of the past. Project Verona is a highly ambitious research project to make that a reality for the infrastructure we build for the cloud. The research combines world-class research on compilers, programming language semantics and type systems to the design of Project Verona. 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