2 research outputs found
Liveness-Based Garbage Collection for Lazy Languages
We consider the problem of reducing the memory required to run lazy
first-order functional programs. Our approach is to analyze programs for
liveness of heap-allocated data. The result of the analysis is used to preserve
only live data---a subset of reachable data---during garbage collection. The
result is an increase in the garbage reclaimed and a reduction in the peak
memory requirement of programs. While this technique has already been shown to
yield benefits for eager first-order languages, the lack of a statically
determinable execution order and the presence of closures pose new challenges
for lazy languages. These require changes both in the liveness analysis itself
and in the design of the garbage collector.
To show the effectiveness of our method, we implemented a copying collector
that uses the results of the liveness analysis to preserve live objects, both
evaluated (i.e., in WHNF) and closures. Our experiments confirm that for
programs running with a liveness-based garbage collector, there is a
significant decrease in peak memory requirements. In addition, a sizable
reduction in the number of collections ensures that in spite of using a more
complex garbage collector, the execution times of programs running with
liveness and reachability-based collectors remain comparable