Real-Time Garbage Collection in Multi-Threaded Systems on a Single Processor

We show the difficulties that arise for the implementation of a real-time garbage collector (GC) in a multi-threaded system. A mechanism for synchronization between threads is proposed for a single processor system. It is shown how this mechanism can be used to maintain exact information on roots, to do incremental or even constant-time root-scanning and to allow pre-emption of GC activity. 1

Real-Time Garbage Collection in Multi-Threaded Systems on a Single Processor

We show the difficulties that arise for the implementation of a real-time garbage collector in a multi-threaded system. A mechanism for synchronization between threads and the garbage collector activities is proposed for a single processor system. It is shown how this mechanism can be used to maintain exact information on roots, to implement efficient write-barriers, to do incremental or even constanttime root-scanning and to guarantee short pre-emption time of garbage collector activity. Special aspects of an implementation for Java that are affected by this mechanism will also be addressed. Finally, experimental data is presented to show that the proposed mechanisms can efficiently be used in real programs. Introduction The difficulties caused by synchronization between the garbage collector (GC) and several mutator threads have so far made an implementation of an exact, incremental, hard real-time garbage collector for such widely used languages as Java impossible. Because of the ..

Real-Time Garbage Collection in Multi-Threaded Systems on a Single Processor

We show the difficulties that arise for the implementation of a real-time garbage collector (GC) in a multi-threaded system. A mechanism for synchronization between threads is proposed for a single processor system. It is shown how this mechanism can be used to maintain exact information on roots, to do incremental or even constant-time root-scanning and to allow pre-emption of GC activity. 1