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Region-Based Memory Management: An Evaluation of Its Support in RTSJ

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Distributed, Embedded and Real-time Java Systems

Abstract

Memory management is a source of unpredictability in the execution time of Java programs. This is because garbage collection introduces possibly unbounded blocking pauses to threads, which is unacceptable in real-time systems. To cope with this problem, the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) adopts a region-based approach which relies on memory scopes that are automatically freed upon termination of their lifetime. This allows the turning off of garbage collection during the execution of critical tasks, thus ensuring real-time guarantees. This chapter explains the RTSJ memory model and proposes improvements to its suggested implementation. It also discusses a static analysis-based approach to ensure that memory scopes are correctly use and dimensioned at compile time.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We consider as non-outer region all scoped regions that are not entered by a considered real-time thread before to enter the considered region (i.e., scoped regions which are not bellow the considered region in the scoped stack of a given control flow).

  2. 2.

    http://www.spec.org/osg/jvm98.

  3. 3.

    Illegal assignments are pointers from a non-scoped MR (i.e., heap or an immortal MR) to a scoped one, or from a scoped region to a non-outer scoped region. Pointers to a non-scoped region are always allowed.

  4. 4.

    This exception is thrown upon any attempt to refer to an object in an inaccessible MemoryArea.

  5. 5.

    when executing putfield, putstatic, astore, or aastore bytecodes.

  6. 6.

    The pauses introduced by this collector provides constant pause times, which makes it possible to run this collector with multimedia applications. But it is not adequate for hard real-time applications because the guaranteed upper limit on pause times is too large.

  7. 7.

    http://adam.lille.inria.fr/soleil/rcd/.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Research Program S2009/TIC-1468, and by Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, through the research grant TIN2009-.07146.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, 28040, Spain

    M. Teresa Higuera-Toledano

  2. CONICET, Departamento de Computación, FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Sergio Yovine

  3. Departamento de Computación, FCEN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Diego Garbervetsky

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  1. M. Teresa Higuera-Toledano
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  2. Sergio Yovine
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  3. Diego Garbervetsky
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Correspondence to M. Teresa Higuera-Toledano .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Facultad de Informática, DACYA, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Calle del Profesor Gaecía Santesmas, Madrid, 28040, Spain

    M. Teresa Higuera-Toledano

  2. , Department of Computer Science, University of York, n/a, Heslington, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom

    Andy J. Wellings

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Higuera-Toledano, M.T., Yovine, S., Garbervetsky, D. (2012). Region-Based Memory Management: An Evaluation of Its Support in RTSJ. In: Higuera-Toledano, M., Wellings, A. (eds) Distributed, Embedded and Real-time Java Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8158-5_5

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