research-article

Handles revisited: optimising performance and memory costs in a real-time collector

Authors:

Tomas Kalibera,

Richard JonesAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 46, Issue 11

Pages 89 - 98

https://doi.org/10.1145/2076022.1993492

Published: 04 June 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Compacting garbage collectors must update all references to objects they move. Updating is a lengthy operation but the updates must be transparent to the mutator. The consequence is that no space can be reclaimed until all references have been updated which, in a real-time collector, must be done incrementally. One solution is to replace direct references to objects with handles. Handles offer several advantages to a real-time collector. They eliminate the updating problem. They allow immediate reuse of the space used by evacuated objects. They incur no copy reserve overhead. However, the execution time overhead of handles has led to them being abandoned by most modern systems.

We re-examine this decision in the context of real-time garbage collection, for which several systems with handles have appeared recently. We provide the first thorough study of the overheads of handles, based on an optimised implementation of different handle designs within Ovm's Minuteman real-time collector. We find that with a good set of optimisations handles are not very expensive. We obtained zero overhead over the widely used Brooks-style compacting collector (1.6% and 3.1% on two other platforms) and 9% increase in memory usage. Our optimisations are particularly applicable to mark-compact collectors, but may also be useful to other collectors.

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Cited By

Ugawa TRitson CJones R(2018)Transactional SapphireACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/322622540:4(1-56)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3226225
Petkovich JOliveira AZhang YReidemeister TFischmeister S(2016)DataMillSoftware—Practice & Experience10.1002/spe.238246:10(1411-1440)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/spe.2382
Nanjekye JBremner DMicic AJul ERacordon D(2023)Towards Reliable Memory Management for Python Native ExtensionsProceedings of the 18th ACM International Workshop on Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of OO Languages, Programs and Systems10.1145/3605158.3605849(15-26)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605158.3605849
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Handles revisited: optimising performance and memory costs in a real-time collector
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
  2. Real-time systems
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Memory management
        Garbage collection

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 46, Issue 11

ISMM '11

November 2011

135 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2076022

Issue’s Table of Contents

ISMM '11: Proceedings of the international symposium on Memory management
June 2011
148 pages
ISBN:9781450302630
DOI:10.1145/1993478
General Chair:
Hans-J. Boehm
HP Labs
,
Program Chair:
David Bacon
IBM T.J. Watson Research

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 04 June 2011

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 46, Issue 11

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Cited By

Ugawa TRitson CJones R(2018)Transactional SapphireACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/322622540:4(1-56)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3226225
Petkovich JOliveira AZhang YReidemeister TFischmeister S(2016)DataMillSoftware—Practice & Experience10.1002/spe.238246:10(1411-1440)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/spe.2382
Nanjekye JBremner DMicic AJul ERacordon D(2023)Towards Reliable Memory Management for Python Native ExtensionsProceedings of the 18th ACM International Workshop on Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of OO Languages, Programs and Systems10.1145/3605158.3605849(15-26)Online publication date: 17-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605158.3605849
Degenbaev UEisinger JHara KHlopko MLippautz MPayer H(2018)Cross-component garbage collectionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32765212:OOPSLA(1-24)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3276521
Ugawa TRitson CJones R(2018)Transactional SapphireACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/322622540:4(1-56)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3226225
Higuera-Toledano M(2014)Building the Java Heap with Bricks in an Embedded Real-Time EnvironmentProceedings of the 2014 IEEE/ACM 18th International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications10.1109/DS-RT.2014.16(57-66)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/DS-RT.2014.16
de Oliveira APetkovich JReidemeister TFischmeister STůma PCasale GField TAmaral J(2013)DataMillProceedings of the 4th ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering10.1145/2479871.2479892(137-148)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2479871.2479892

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