Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming

ECOOP 2007: ECOOP 2007 – Object-Oriented Programming pp 79–100Cite as

Object-Relative Addressing: Compressed Pointers in 64-Bit Java Virtual Machines

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4609))

Abstract

64-bit address spaces come at the price of pointers requiring twice as much memory as 32-bit address spaces, resulting in increased memory usage.

This paper reduces the memory usage of 64-bit pointers in the context of Java virtual machines through pointer compression, called Object-Relative Addressing (ORA). The idea is to compress 64-bit raw pointers into 32-bit offsets relative to the referencing object’s virtual address. Unlike previous work on the subject using a constant base address for compressed pointers, ORA allows for applying pointer compression to Java programs that allocate more than 4GB of memory.

Our experimental results using Jikes RVM and the SPECjbb and DaCapo benchmarks on an IBM POWER4 machine show that the overhead introduced by ORA is statistically insignificant on average compared to raw 64-bit pointer representation, while reducing the total memory usage by 10% on average and up to 14.5% for some applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Venstermans, K., Eeckhout, L., De Bosschere, K.: 64-bit versus 32-bit virtual machines for Java. Software—Practice and Experience 36(1), 1–26 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Adl-Tabatabai, A.R., Bharadwaj, J., Cierniak, M., Eng, M., Fang, J., Lewis, B.T., Murphy, B.R., Stichnoth, J.M.: Improving 64-bit Java IPF performance by compressing heap references. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO), March 2004, pp. 100–110. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Guyer, S.Z., McKinley, K.S.: Finding your cronies: static analysis for dynamic object colocation. In: Proceedings of the 19th Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pp. 237–250. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Hirzel, M., Diwan, A., Hertz, M.: Connectivity-based garbage collection. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programing, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pp. 359–373. ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Hirzel, M., Henkel, J., Diwan, A., Hind, M.: Understanding the connectivity of heap objects. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Memory Management (ISMM), pp. 36–39 (June 2002)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Cherem, S., Rugina, R.: Region analysis and transformation for Java programs. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Memory Management (ISMM), pp. 85–96. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Lattner, C., Adve, V.: Transparent pointer compression for linked data structures. In: Proceedings of the Third 2005 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Memory Systems Performance (MSP), pp. 24–35. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Venstermans, K., Eeckhout, L., De Bosschere, K.: Space-efficient 64-bit Java objects through selective typed virtual addressing. In: Proceedings of the 4th Annual International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO), pp. 76–86 (March 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Mahlke, S.A., Hank, R.E., McCormick, J.E., August, D.I., Hwu, W.W.: A comparison of full and partial predicated execution support for ILP processors. In: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), pp. 138–149 (June 1995)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Alpern, B., Attanasio, C.R., Barton, J.J., Burke, M.G., Cheng, P., Choi, J.D., Cocchi, A., Fink, S.J., Grove, D., Hind, M., Hummel, S.F., Lieber, D., Litvinov, V., Mergen, M.F., Ngo, T., Russell, J.R., Sarkar, V., Serrano, M.J., Shepherd, J.C., Smith, S.E., Sreedhar, V.C., Srinivasan, H., Whaley, J.: The Jalape\(\tilde{\text{n}}\)o Virtual Machine. IBM Systems Journal 39(1), 211–238 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Blackburn, S.M., Garner, R., Hoffman, C., Khan, A.M., McKinley, K.S., Bentzur, R., Diwan, A., Feinberg, D., Frampton, D., Guyer, S.Z., Hirzel, M., Hosking, A., Jump, M., Lee, H., Moss, J.E.B., Phansalkar, A., Stefanović, D., VanDrunen, T., von Dincklage, D., Wiedermann, B.: The DaCapo benchmarks: Java benchmarking development and analysis. In: Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programing, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pp. 169–190. ACM Press, New York (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Lilja, D.J.: Measuring Computer Performance: A Practitioner’s Guide. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Dieckmann, S., Hölzle, U.: A study of the allocation behavior of the specjvm98 Java benchmarks. In: Guerraoui, R. (ed.) ECOOP 1999. LNCS, vol. 1628, pp. 92–115. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Blackburn, S.M., Cheng, P., McKinley, K.S.: Myths and realities: the performance impact of garbage collection. In: Proceedings of the joint International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS), pp. 25–36. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kim, J.S., Hsu, Y.: Memory system behavior of Java programs: methodology and analysis. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS), pp. 264–274. ACM Press, New York (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Shuf, Y., Serrano, M.J., Gupta, M., Singh, J.P.: Characterizing the memory behavior of Java workloads: a structured view and opportunities for optimizations. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS), pp. 194–205 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Chen, G., Kandemir, M., Vijaykrishnan, N., Irwin, M.J., Mathiske, B., Wolczko, M.: Heap compression for memory-constrained Java environments. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), pp. 282–301. ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Chen, G., Kandemir, M., Irwin, M.J.: Exploiting frequent field values in Java objects for reducing heap memory requirements. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM/USENIX International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE), pp. 68–78. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Mogul, J.C., Bartlett, J.F., Mayo, R.N., Srivastava, A.: Performance implications of multiple pointer sizes. In: USENIX Winter, pp. 187–200 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Lattner, C., Adve, V.: Automatic pool allocation: improving performance by controlling data structure layout in the heap. In: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), pp. 129–142. ACM Press, New York (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Zhang, Y., Gupta, R.: Data compression transformations for dynamically allocated data structures. In: Computational Complexity, pp. 14–28 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Kaehler, T., Krasner, G.: LOOM: large object-oriented memory for Smalltalk-80 systems. In: Readings in object-oriented database systems, pp. 298–307. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc. San Francisco (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Bacon, D.F., Fink, S.J., Grove, D.: Space- and time-efficient implementation of the Java object model. In: Magnusson, B. (ed.) ECOOP 2002. LNCS, vol. 2374, pp. 111–132. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Steele, Jr., G.L.: Data representation in PDP-10 MACLISP. Technical Report AI Memo 420, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (September 1997)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Hanson, D.R.: A portable storage management system for the Icon programming language. Software—Practice and Experience 10(6), 489–500 (1980)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  26. Dybvig, R.K., Eby, D., Bruggeman, C.: Don’t stop the BIBOP: Flexible and efficient storage management for dynamically-typed languages. Technical Report 400, Indiana University Computer Science Department (March 1994)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Shuf, Y., Gupta, M., Bordawekar, R., Singh, J.P.: Exploiting prolific types for memory management and optimizations. In: Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), pp. 295–306. ACM Press, New York (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ELIS Department, Ghent University, Belgium

    Kris Venstermans, Lieven Eeckhout & Koen De Bosschere

Authors
  1. Kris Venstermans
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Lieven Eeckhout
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Koen De Bosschere
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Erik Ernst

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Venstermans, K., Eeckhout, L., De Bosschere, K. (2007). Object-Relative Addressing: Compressed Pointers in 64-Bit Java Virtual Machines. In: Ernst, E. (eds) ECOOP 2007 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4609. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73589-2_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73589-2_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73588-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73589-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation