Selected work

STM in the Small: Trading Generality for Performance in Software Transactional Memory Aleksandar Dragojević, Tim Harris, EuroSys 2012
AC: Composable Asynchronous IO for Native Languages Tim Harris, Martín Abadi, Rebecca Isaacs, Ross McIlroy, OOPSLA 2011
Architectural support for Fair Reader-Writer Locking Enrique Vallejo, Ramón Beivide, Adrián Cristal, Tim Harris, Fernando Vallejo, Osman Unsal, Mateo Valero, MICRO 2010
Transactional Memory (Second Edition) Tim Harris, James Larus, Ravi Rajwar, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2010
Dynamic Filtering: Multi-Purpose Architecture Support for Language Runtime Systems Tim Harris, Saša Tomić, Adrián Cristal, Osman Unsal, ASPLOS 2010
The Multikernel: A New OS Architecture for Scalable Multicore Systems Andrew Baumann, Paul Barham, Pierre-Evariste Dagand, Tim Harris, Rebecca Isaacs, Simon Peter, Timothy Roscoe, Adrian Schüpbach, Akhilesh Singhania, SOSP 2009
Transactional Memory with Strong Atomicity Using Off-The-Shelf Memory Protection Hardware Martín Abadi, Tim Harris, Mojtaba Mehrara, PPoPP 2009
Semantics of Transactional Memory and Automatic Mutual Exclusion Martín Abadi, Andrew Birrell, Tim Harris, Michael Isard, POPL 2008
Feedback-Directed Implicit Parallelism Tim Harris, Satnam Singh, ICFP 2007
Concurrent Programming Without Locks Keir Fraser, Tim Harris, ACM TOCS 2007
Optimizing Memory Transactions Tim Harris, Mark Plesko, Avraham Shinnar, David Tarditi, PLDI 2006
Composable Memory Transactions Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton-Jones, Maurice Herlihy, PPoPP 2005
Language Support for Lightweight Transactions Tim Harris, Keir Fraser, OOPSLA 2003
Xen and the Art of Virtualization Paul Barham, Boris Dragovic, Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, Alex Ho, Rolf Neugebauer, Ian Pratt, Andrew Warfield, SOSP 2003

All publications by year

STM in the Small: Trading Generality for Performance in Software Transactional Memory Aleksandar Dragojević, Tim Harris, EuroSys 2012
Hardware Transactional Memory with Software-Defined Conflicts Ruben Titos-Gil, Manuel Acacio, Jose García, Tim Harris, Adrián Cristal, Osman S. Unsal, Ibrahim Hur, Mateo Valero, HiPEAC 2012, also appears in ACM TACO, Vol 8, No. 4, Jan 2012
STM2: A Parallel STM for High Performance Simultaneous Multithreading Systems Gokcen Kestor, Roberto Gioiosa, Tim Harris, Osman S. Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Ibrahim Hur, Mateo Valero, PACT 2011
AC: Composable Asynchronous IO for Native Languages Tim Harris, Martín Abadi, Rebecca Isaacs, Ross McIlroy, OOPSLA 2011
Profiling and Optimizing Transactional Memory Applications Ferad Zyulkyarov, Srdjan Stipic, Tim Harris, Osman S. Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Ibrahim Hur and Mateo Valero, IJPP 2011
Hybrid Transactional Memory with Pessimistic Concurrency Control Enrique Vallejo, Sutirtha Sanyal, Tim Harris, Fernando Vallejo, Ramon Beivide, Osman Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Mateo Valero, IJPP 2011, vol. 39, issue 3
Semantics of transactional memory and automatic mutual exclusion Martín Abadi, Andrew Birrell, Tim Harris, Michael Isard, TOPLAS 2011, based on our earlier POPL 2008 paper.
Architectural support for Fair Reader-Writer Locking Enrique Vallejo, Ramón Beivide, Adrián Cristal, Tim Harris, Fernando Vallejo, Osman Unsal, Mateo Valero, MICRO 2010
Transactional Memory (Second Edition) Tim Harris, James Larus, Ravi Rajwar, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2010
Discovering and Understanding Performance Bottlenecks in Transactional Applications (best paper award) Ferad Zyulkyarov, Srđjan Stipić, Tim Harris, Osman Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Mateo Valero, Ibrahim Hur, PACT 2010
Design principles for end-to-end multicore schedulers Simon Peter, Adrian Schüpbach, Paul Barham, Andrew Baumann, Rebecca Isaacs, Tim Harris, and Timothy Roscoe, HotPar 2010
Dynamic Filtering: Multi-Purpose Architecture Support for Language Runtime Systems Tim Harris, Saša Tomić, Adrián Cristal, Osman Unsal, ASPLOS 2010
Debugging Programs that use Atomic Blocks and Transactional Memory Ferad Zyulkyarov, Tim Harris, Osman S. Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Mateo Valero, PPoPP 2010
EazyHTM, Eager-Lazy Hardware Transactional Memory Saša Tomić, Cristian Perfumo, Chinmay Kulkarni, Adria Armejach, Adrián Cristal, Osman Unsal, Tim Harris, Mateo Valero, MICRO 2009
The Multikernel: A new OS architecture for scalable multicore systems Andrew Baumann, Paul Barham, Pierre-Evariste Dagand, Tim Harris, Rebecca Isaacs, Simon Peter, Timothy Roscoe, Adrian Schüpbach, Akhilesh Singhania, SOSP 2009
Perspectives on Transactional Memory Martín Abadi, Tim Harris, CONCUR 2009 (invited paper)
A Lightweight In-Place Implementation for Software Thread-Level Speculation Cosmin E. Oancea, Alan Mycroft, Tim Harris, SPAA 2009
QuakeTM: Parallelizing a Complex Serial Application Using Transactional Memory Vladimir Gajinov, Ferad Zyulkyarov, Adrián Cristal, Osman S. Unsal, Eduard Ayguadé, Tim Harris, Mateo Valero, ICS 2009
Taking the Heat Off Transactions: Dynamic Selection of Pessimistic Concurrency Control Nehir Sonmez, Adrián Cristal, Tim Harris, Osman S. Unsal, Mateo Valero, IPDPS 2009
A Runtime System for Software Lock Elision Amitabha Roy, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, EuroSys 2009
Exploring the Limits of Disjoint Access Parallelism Amitabha Roy, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, HotPar 2009
Implementation and Use of Transactional Memory with Dynamic Separation Martín Abadi, Andrew Birrell, Tim Harris, Johnson Hsieh, Michael Isard, Compiler Construction 2009
Transactional Memory with Strong Atomicity Using Off-The-Shelf Memory Protection Hardware Martín Abadi, Tim Harris, Mojtaba Mehrara, PPoPP 2009
Atomic Quake: Using Transactional Memory in an Interactive Multiplayer Game Server Ferad Zyulkyarov, Vladimir Gajinov, Osman S. Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Eduard Ayguadé, Tim Harris, Mateo Valero, PPoPP 2009
Language Constructs for Transactional Memory (or: Transactional Memory and Atomic Blocks Are Not the Same Thing) Tim Harris, POPL 2009 (invited talk)
Profiling Transactional Memory applications on an Atomic Block Basis: A Haskell Case Study Nehir Sonmez, Adrián Cristal, Osman Unsal, Tim Harris, Mateo Valero, MULTIPROG 2009
A Model of Dynamic Separation for Transactional Memory Martín Abadi, Tim Harris, Katherine Moore, CONCUR 2008
Embracing Diversity in the Barrelfish Manycore Operating System Adrian Schüpbach, Simon Peter, Andrew Baumann, Timothy Roscoe, Paul Barham, Tim Harris, Rebecca Isaacs, Workshop on Managed Many-Core Systems 2008
Parallel Generational-Copying Garbage Collection with a Block-Structured Heap. Simon Marlow, Tim Harris, Roshan P. James, Simon Peyton Jones, ISMM 2008
The Limits of Software Transactional Memory (STM): Dissecting Haskell STM Applications on a Many-Core Environment. Cristian Perfumo, Nehir Sonmez, Srđjan Stipić, Osman Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Tim Harris, Mateo Valero, Computing Frontiers 2008
Towards Fair, Scalable, Locking E. Vallejo, S. Sanyal, T. Harris, F. Vallejo, R. Beivide, O. Unsal, A. Cristal, M. Valero, Workshop on Exploiting Parallelism with Transactional Memory and other Hardware Assisted Methods (EPHAM) 2008
Dynamic Separation for Transactional Memory Martín Abadi, Andrew Birrell, Tim Harris, Johnson Hsieh, Michael Isard, Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2008-43
Hybrid Transactional Memory to Accelerate Safe Lock-based Transactions Enrique Vallejo, Tim Harris, Adrián Cristal, Osman Unsal, Mateo Valero, TRANSACT 2008
Semantics of Transactional Memory and Automatic Mutual Exclusion Martín Abadi, Andrew Birrell, Tim Harris, Michael Isard, POPL 2008. A technical report containing notes on definitions and proofs is also available, as is a paper in TOPLAS.
Feedback-Directed Implicit Parallelism Tim Harris, Satnam Singh, ICFP 2007
Memory Management for Transaction Processing Core in Heterogeneous Chip Multiprocessors Ferad Zyulkyarov, Osman Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Milos Milovanovic, Eduard Ayguadé, Mateo Valero, Tim Harris, Workshop on Operating System support for Heterogeneous Multicore Architectures (OSHMA) 2007
Abstract Nested Transactions Tim Harris, Srđjan Stipić, TRANSACT 2007
Dissecting transactional execution in Haskell Cristian Perfumo, Nehir Sonmez, Osman S. Unsal, Adrián Cristal, Mateo Valero, Tim Harris, TRANSACT 2007
Transactional Memory: an Overview Tim Harris, Adrián Cristal, Osman S. Unsal, Eduard Ayguadé, Fabrizio Gagliardi, Burton Smith, Mateo Valero, IEEE Micro Special Issue: Hot Tutorials, May/June 2007
Concurrent Programming Without Locks Keir Fraser, Tim Harris, ACM TOCS, 2007
Optimizing Across Interfaces Tim Harris, Eric Koskinen, unpublished draft
Securing Software by Enforcing Data-Flow Integrity Miguel Castro, Manuel Costa, Tim Harris, OSDI 2006
Resource Management for Global Public Computing: Many Policies Are Better Than (N)one Evangelos Kotsovinos, Iulia Ion, Tim Harris, USENIX WORLDS 2006
Leaky Regions: Linking Reclamation Hints to Program Structure Tim Harris, Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2006-84
Optimizing Memory Transactions Tim Harris, Mark Plesko, Avraham Shinnar, David Tarditi, PLDI 2006
Transactional Memory With Data Invariants Tim Harris, Simon Peyton Jones, TRANSACT 2006
Lock Free Data Structures using STMs in Haskell Anthony Discolo, Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, Satnam Singh, FLOPS 2006
Learning Communication Patterns in Singularity Paul Barham, Rebecca Isaacs, Richard Mortier, Tim Harris, First Workshop on Tackling Computer Systems Problems with Machine Learning Techniques (SysML) 2006
Revocable Locks for Non-Blocking Programming Tim Harris, Keir Fraser, PPoPP 2005
Composable Memory Transactions Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, Maurice Herlihy, PPoPP 2005
Location Based Placement of Whole Distributed Systems David Spence, Jon Crowcroft, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, CoNEXT 2005
Non-Blocking Hashtables with Open Addressing Chris Purcell, Tim Harris, DISC 2005
Haskell on a Shared-Memory Multiprocessor Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, Haskell workshop 2005
Implementing Multi-word Atomic Snapshots on Current Hardware Chris Purcell, Tim Harris, PODC 2004 (brief announcement)
Exceptions and Side-Effects in Atomic Blocks Tim Harris, Workshop on COncurrency and Synchronization in Java Programs 2004
Global-Scale Service Deployment in the XenoServer Platform Evangelos Kotsovinos, Tim Moreton, Ian Pratt, Russ Ross, Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, USENIX WORLDS 2004
Language Support for Lightweight Transactions Tim Harris, Keir Fraser, OOPSLA 2003
Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design Jean Bacon, Tim Harris, 2003
Design Choices for Language-Based Transactions Tim Harris, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory technical report UCAM-CL-TR-572
The Xenoserver Computing Infrastructure Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, Ian Leslie, Ian Pratt, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory technical report UCAM-CL-TR-552
Controlling the XenoServer Open Platform Steven Hand, Tim Harris, Evangelos Kotsovinos, Ian Pratt, OpenArch, April 2003
Xen and the Art of Virtualization Paul Barham, Boris Dragovic, Keir Fraser, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, Alex Ho, Rolf Neugebauer, Ian Pratt, Andrew Warfield, SOSP 2003
XenoSearch: Distributed Resource Discovery in the XenoServer Open Platform David Spence, Tim Harris, HPDC, 2003
Lighthouses for Scalable Distributed Location Marcelo Pias, Jon Crowcroft, Steve Wilbur, Tim Harris, Saleem Bhatti, IPTPS 2003
Managing Trust and Reputation in the XenoServer Open Platform Boris Dragovic, Steven Hand, Tim Harris, Evangelos Kotsovinos, Andrew Twigg, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Trust Management 2003
Xen 2002 Barham, Paul R., Dragovic, Boris, Fraser, Keir A., Hand, Steven M., Harris, Timothy L., Ho, Alex C., Kotsovinos, Evangelos, Madhavapeddy, Anil V.S., Neugebauer, Rolf, Pratt, Ian A., Warfield, Andrew K., University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory technical report UCAM-CL-TR-553
Storage, Mutability and Naming in Pasta Ian A Pratt, Timothy Moreton, Tim Harris, International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Computing 2002
Dependable Computing Needs Pervasive Debugging Tim Harris, SIGOPS European Workshop 2002
A Practical Multi-Word Compare-and-Swap Operation Tim Harris, Keir Fraser, Ian Pratt, DISC 2002
A Pragmatic Implementation of Non-Blocking Linked Lists Tim Harris, DISC 2001
Dynamic Adaptive Pre-Tenuring Tim Harris, ISMM 2000
Extensible Virtual Machines Tim Harris, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Early Storage Reclamation in a Tracing Garbage Collector Tim Harris, ACM SIGPLAN Notices 34(4)
An Extensible Virtual Machine Architecture Tim Harris, Workshop on Simplicity, Performance and Portability in Virtual Machine Design 1999
Controlling Run-Time Compilation Tim Harris, Workshop on Programming Languages for Real-Time Industrial Applications 1998

Community service

I currently serve as vice-chair of EuroSys, the SIGOPS European Chapter. I'm general chair for ASPLOS 2012 in London, UK. I'm serving on the steering committee for TRANSACT, and the programme committees for OSDI 2012, PLOS 2011, SOSP 2011, HotPar 2011, POPL 2011, ICDCN 2011, VEE 2010, IPDPS 2010, ASPLOS 2010, PPoPP 2010, SSS 2009, PODC 2009, ESOP 2009, ASPLOS 2009, PPoPP 2009, DISC 2008, EuroSys Doctoral Workshop 2008, PPoPP 2008, VEE 2007, ISMM 2007, OOPSLA 2007, PLDI 2007, EuroSys 2007, DISC 2006, PODC 2006, PPoPP 2006, EuroSys Doctoral Workshop 2005 (chair), SCOOL 2005 (co-chair), VEE 2005, PODC CSJP Workshop 2004, and been a reviewer for numerous conferences and journals such as OOPSLA, OSDI, PLDI, POPL, SOSP, TOCS and TOPLAS.

Brief bio

Tim Harris is a researcher at MSR Cambridge where he works on abstractions for using multi-core computers. He is currently working on the Barrelfish operating system, and on architecture support for programming language runtime systems. His other recent work has focused on the implementation of software transactional memory for multi-core computers, and the design of programming language features based on it. He is a co-author of the Morgan Claypool book Transactional Memory.

Tim has a BA and PhD in computer science from Cambridge University Computer Laboratory. He was on the faculty at the Computer Laboratory from 2000-2004 where he led the department's research on concurrent data structures and contributed to the Xen virtual machine monitor project. He joined Microsoft Research in 2004.

A recent photo for print use is available at http://research.microsoft.com/~tharris/tharris-print.jpg.

Contact details

Microsoft Research Ltd
Roger Needham Building
J J Thomson Avenue
Cambridge, CB3 0FB
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 1223 479700
Fax: +44 1223 479999