Polar opposites: next generation languages and architectures

Abstract

Future hardware technology is on a collision course with modern programming languages. Adoption of programming languages is rare and slow, but programmers are now embracing high-level object-oriented languages such as Java and C# due to their software engineering benefits which include (1) fast development through code reuse and garbage collection; (2) ease of maintenance through encapsulation and object-orientation; (3) reduced errors through type safety, pointer disciplines, and garbage collection; and (4) portability. These programs use small methods, dynamic class binding, heavy memory allocation, short-lived objects, and pointer data structures, and thus obscure parallelism, locality, and control flow, in direct conflict with hardware trends.