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Modelling a distributed cached store for garbage collection: The algorithm and its correctness proof

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ECOOP’98 — Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1445))

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Abstract

Caching and persistence support efficient, convenient and transparent distributed data sharing. The most natural model of persistence is persistence by reachability, managed automatically by a garbage collector (GC). We propose a very general model of such a system (based on distributed shared memory) and a scalable, asynchronous distributed GC algorithm. Within this model, we show sufficient and widely applicable correctness conditions for the interactions between applications, store, memory, coherence, and GC.

The GC runs as a set of processes (local to each participating machine) communicating by asynchronous messages. Collection does not interfere with applications by setting locks, polluting caches, or causing I/O; this requirement raised some novel and interesting challenges which we address in this article. The algorithm is safe and live; it is not complete, i.e. it collects some distributed cycles of garbage but not necessarily all.

This work was supported in part by the Esprit Project PerDiS Nℴ 22533.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INESC/IST, R. Alves Redol Nℴ 9, Lisboa, Portugal

    Paulo Ferreira

  2. INRIA Rocquencourt, B.P. 105, 78153, Le Chesnay Cedex, France

    Marc Shapiro

Authors
  1. Paulo Ferreira
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  2. Marc Shapiro
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Eric Jul

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ferreira, P., Shapiro, M. (1998). Modelling a distributed cached store for garbage collection: The algorithm and its correctness proof. In: Jul, E. (eds) ECOOP’98 — Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1445. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0054094

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0054094

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64737-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69064-1

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