article

Dusty caches for reference counting garbage collection

Authors:

Scott Friedman,

Praveen Krishnamurthy,

Roger Chamberlain,

Jason E. FrittsAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, Volume 34, Issue 1

Pages 3 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/1147349.1147353

Published: 17 September 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Reference counting is a garbage-collection technique that maintains a per-object count of the number of pointers to that object. When the count reaches zero, the object must be dead and can be collected. Although it is cannot detect all garbage on its own, it is well suited for some applications and is implemented typically in conjunction with other methods to increase overall precision. A disadvantage of reference counting is the extra storage traffic that is introduced. In this paper, we describe a new cache write-back policy that can substantially decrease the reference-counting traffic to RAM.We investigate a cache design that takes advantage of temporally silent stores, by remebering the first-fetched value of a cache subblock, so that the subblock need not be written back to RAM unless a different value is present. We present results from experiments that show the effectiveness of this approach, particularly in mitigating the storage traffic due to reference counting.

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Cited By

Zhang QXu LZhang XXu B(2021)Quantifying the Interpretation Overhead of PythonScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759(102759)Online publication date: Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759
Chamberlain RCytron RFritts JLockwood J(2006)Vision for liquid architectureProceedings 20th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium10.1109/IPDPS.2006.1639583(8 pp.)Online publication date: 2006
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS.2006.1639583
Zhang QXu LZhang XXu B(2022)Quantifying the interpretation overhead of PythonScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759215:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Dusty caches for reference counting garbage collection
1. Hardware
  1. Integrated circuits
    1. Semiconductor memory
      1. Dynamic memory
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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Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 34, Issue 1

Special issue: MEDEA'05

March 2006

86 pages

ISSN:0163-5964

DOI:10.1145/1147349

Issue’s Table of Contents

MEDEA '05: Proceedings of the 2005 workshop on MEmory performance: DEaling with Applications , systems and architecture
September 2005
76 pages
Conference Chairs:
Sandro Bartolini
University of Siena, Italy
,
Pierfrancesco Foglia
University of Pisa, Italy
,
Roberto Giorgi
University of Siena, Italy
,
Cosimo Antonio Prete
University of Pisa, Italy

Copyright © 2005 Authors.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 September 2005

Published in SIGARCH Volume 34, Issue 1

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Cited By

Zhang QXu LZhang XXu B(2021)Quantifying the Interpretation Overhead of PythonScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759(102759)Online publication date: Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759
Chamberlain RCytron RFritts JLockwood J(2006)Vision for liquid architectureProceedings 20th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium10.1109/IPDPS.2006.1639583(8 pp.)Online publication date: 2006
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS.2006.1639583
Zhang QXu LZhang XXu B(2022)Quantifying the interpretation overhead of PythonScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759215:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.scico.2021.102759
Shidal JSpilo AScheid PCytron RKavi K(2015)Recycling trash in cacheACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2887746.275418350:11(118-130)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2887746.2754183
Shidal JSpilo AScheid PCytron RKavi KHosking ABond M(2015)Recycling trash in cacheProceedings of the 2015 International Symposium on Memory Management10.1145/2754169.2754183(118-130)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2754169.2754183
Shidal JGottlieb ZCytron RKavi KSinger JKulkarni MHarris T(2014)Trash in cacheProceedings of the workshop on Memory Systems Performance and Correctness10.1145/2618128.2618133(1-9)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2618128.2618133
Clemons TFaisal STatikonda SAggarwal CParthasarathy S(2014)One, Two, Hash! Counting Hash Tables for Flash DevicesProceedings of the 1st IKDD Conference on Data Sciences10.1145/2567688.2567693(1-10)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2567688.2567693
Chamberlain RCytron RFritts JLockwood J(2006)Vision for liquid architectureProceedings of the 20th international conference on Parallel and distributed processing10.5555/1898699.1898810(287-287)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1898699.1898810

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