2/3/2004
3:30pm-4:30pm
ECOT 831
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Connectivity-Based Garbage Collection
Grad Student, Department of Computer Science
Garbage collection is an important feature of modern programming languages: by
liberating the programmer from the responsibility of freeing up unused memory
by hand, it leads to code with fewer bugs and cleaner design. However, these
software engineering benefits have their costs: garbage collection may incur
annoying pauses, slowdowns, and increased memory requirements. This talk
presents a novel family of garbage collection algorithms that use information
about the connectivity of heap objects to reduce these costs.
I first present empirical data showing that connectivity information is a good
indicator for when objects die. Then I describe a family of garbage collectors
that exploit connectivity properties to yield short pause times, good
throughput, and low memory footprint. As part of implementing this approach, I
developed the first non-trivial pointer analysis that handles all of Java,
including dynamic class loading, reflection, and native code. I present an
evaluation of connectivity-based garbage collection and the pointer analysis.
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BACTAC, the Beverage And Chips Tuesday Afternoon Colloquium, is a weekly forum
run by graduate students. The goal is provide an informal setting in which
anyone can (basically) present anything. In the past, we have had practice
talks for conferences and job interviews, research reports, juggle lessons (!),
student representative reports, internship discussions, an introduction to
ergonomics, and "pay attention to this when you are going to look for job"
discussions.
BACTAC is meant to be an informal and social event to promote the interaction
among graduate students. BACTAC is typically held every Tuesday, at 3:30pm,
in room ECOT 831. Free munchies and drinks are provided.
Please email Caleb Phillips
for more information or if you want to be a speaker.
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