PDL Talk Series

July 23, 2026

TIME: 12:00 noon to approximately 1:00 pm EDT
PLACE: Virtual - a zoom link will be emailed closer to the seminar

Kim Keeton, Google

Not Your Grandparents' Memory System
Virtual memory, invented in the 1960s, has been tremendously successful and has served us well in the last 60 years. However, 60 years in computing is ancient history, and many early assumptions have fundamentally changed or vanished, and new challenges have arisen. Thus, in 2025, it’s worthwhile to reexamine how memory systems have changed and how memory management should adapt to these changes. In this talk, we examine several trends and their implications on memory systems. First, the migration of computation to data centers and the cloud has changed the question that memory management must answer, from how to minimize cache misses in a server’s fixed-size memory to how to minimize memory usage while satisfying application performance targets to facilitate cluster-wide management. This shift requires a rethinking of historical algorithms and evaluation methods. Second, the increasing cost of DRAM has led to tiered memory systems, prompting questions about how these systems should be architected, managed and evaluated. Finally, the increasing heterogeneity of compute and memory technologies means that memories are no longer strict hierarchies, leading to questions about how these resource pools should be managed.

BIO: Dr. Kimberly Keeton is a Principal Software Engineer in the SystemsResearch@Google group. Her recent research focuses on memory tiering and efficiency as well as systems support for AI applications. Prior to joining Google, she was a Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs, where she investigated how to improve the manageability, dependability and usability of large-scale storage and information systems, and how these systems can exploit emerging technologies like persistent memory to improve functionality and performance. Her work has led to numerous publications and granted patents, garnered multiple awards and contributed to multiple products. Kim received her PhD and MS in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley and her BS in Computer Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon. She is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, and has served as program chair for SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys, SIGMETRICS, FAST and DSN Performance and Dependability Symposium. She acts as an industrial advisor to university research groups at Carnegie Mellon, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin. In her spare time, she sings with the Grammy-nominated chorus, Pacific Edge Voices.

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