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Concurrent Cycle Collection in Reference Counted Systems

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ECOOP 2001 — Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2072))

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Abstract

Automatic storage reclamation via reference counting has important advantages, but has always suffered from a major weakness due to its inability to reclaim cyclic data structures.

We describe a novel cycle collection algorithm that is both concurrent — it is capable of collecting garbage even in the presence of simultaneous mutation — and localized—it never needs to perform a global search of the entire data space. We describe our algorithm in detail and present a proof of correctness. We have implemented our algorithm in the Jalapeño Java virtual machine as part of the Recycler, a concurrent multiprocessor reference counting garbage collector that achieves maximum mutator pause times of only 6 milliseconds. We present measurements of the behavior of the cycle collection algorithm over a set of eight benchmarks that demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm at finding garbage cycles, handling concurrent mutation, and eliminating global tracing.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM T.J., Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY, 10598, USA

    David F. Bacon & V. T. Rajan

Authors
  1. David F. Bacon
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  2. V. T. Rajan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Åbogade 34, 8200, Århus N, Denmark

    Jørgen Lindskov Knudsen

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bacon, D.F., Rajan, V.T. (2001). Concurrent Cycle Collection in Reference Counted Systems. In: Knudsen, J.L. (eds) ECOOP 2001 — Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2072. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45337-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45337-7_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42206-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45337-6

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