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

Heap Abstractions for Static Analysis

Heap data is potentially unbounded and seemingly arbitrary. As a consequence, unlike stack and static memory, heap memory cannot be abstracted directly in terms of a fixed set of source variable names appearing in the program being analysed. This makes it an interesting topic of study and there is an abundance of literature employing heap abstractions. Although most studies have addressed similar concerns, their formulations and formalisms often seem dissimilar and some times even unrelated. Thus, the insights gained in one description of heap abstraction may not directly carry over to some other description. This survey is a result of our quest for a unifying theme in the existing descriptions of heap abstractions. In particular, our interest lies in the abstractions and not in the algorithms that construct them. In our search of a unified theme, we view a heap abstraction as consisting of two features: a heap model to represent the heap memory and a summarization technique for bounding the heap representation. We classify the models as storeless, store based, and hybrid. We describe various summarization techniques based on k-limiting, allocation sites, patterns, variables, other generic instrumentation predicates, and higher-order logics. This approach allows us to compare the insights of a large number of seemingly dissimilar heap abstractions and also paves way for creating new abstractions by mix-and-match of models and summarization techniques.Comment: 49 pages, 20 figure

Resource Polymorphism

We present a resource-management model for ML-style programming languages, designed to be compatible with the OCaml philosophy and runtime model. This is a proposal to extend the OCaml language with destructors, move semantics, and resource polymorphism, to improve its safety, efficiency, interoperability, and expressiveness. It builds on the ownership-and-borrowing models of systems programming languages (Cyclone, C++11, Rust) and on linear types in functional programming (Linear Lisp, Clean, Alms). It continues a synthesis of resources from systems programming and resources in linear logic initiated by Baker.It is a combination of many known and some new ideas. On the novel side, it highlights the good mathematical structure of Stroustrup's “Resource acquisition is initialisation” (RAII) idiom for resource management based on destructors, a notion sometimes confused with finalizers, and builds on it a notion of resource polymorphism, inspired by polarisation in proof theory, that mixes C++'s RAII and a tracing garbage collector (GC). In particular, it proposes to identify the types of GCed values with types with trivial destructor: from this definition it deduces a model in which GC is the default allocation mode, and where GCed values can be used without restriction both in owning and borrowing contexts.The proposal targets a new spot in the design space, with an automatic and predictable resource-management model, at the same time based on lightweight and expressive language abstractions. It is backwards-compatible: current code is expected to run with the same performance, the new abstractions fully combine with the current ones, and it supports a resource-polymorphic extension of libraries. It does so with only a few additions to the runtime, and it integrates with the current GC implementation. It is also compatible with the upcoming multicore extension, and suggests that the Rust model for eliminating data-races applies.Interesting questions arise for a safe and practical type system, many of which have already been thoroughly investigated in the languages and prototypes Cyclone, Rust, and Alms