CLR: Internals and Future Direction

Dr. Jim Miller
Microsoft, Redmond, USA

Fr. 7. April 2006, 10:15 - 12:15
JKU, Hörsaal 9

Earlier this year, Microsoft released a new version of Visual Studio including the latest version of the Common Language Runtime. I’ll talk about the implementation of some of the new technology (generics, for example). Then I’ll talk a little bit about future directions for the CLR. But I’ll leave most of the time for discussion purposes. What would you like to see in the next version of the CLR? What have you always wanted to know about how the CLR evolves over time? What technologies do you think should become part of a future CLR?

Jim Miller is a senior architect on Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) team. His current work is on architectural changes to allow innovation in the core of the CLR and the managed Frameworks while preserving backward compatibility. He also serves as liaison with the academic, research, and compiler communities for the CLR team.

Jim holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and served on the faculty at Brandeis University as well as on the research staff at MIT. He has been on the research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation and the Open Software Foundation. Before joining Microsoft, he was on the senior management team of the World Wide Web Consortium, reporting to Tim Berners-Lee and in charge of work on security, electronic commerce, child protection, privacy protection, accessibility, and intellectual property protection.

Jim joined Microsoft in 1998, leading the program management team for the kernel of the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). His responsibility included garbage collection, metadata definition and file formats, intermediate language (IL) definition, IL-to-native code compilation, and remote objects. He also serves as editor for ECMA TC39/TG3, which is charged with creating an international standard for a Common Language Infrastructure. To validate this standard, Jim helped create the Shared Source CLI (also known as Rotor), a complete implementation of the standard, runnable on Windows, Macintosh, and Unix operating systems, available in source form for teaching and non-commercial purposes.