Principled scavenging
Authors: 
Stefan Monnier, Bratin Saha, and 
Zhong ShaoAuthors Info & Claims
Stefan Monnier, Bratin Saha, and Zhong ShaoAuthors Info & ClaimsAbstract
Proof-carrying code and typed assembly languages aim to minimize the trusted computing base by directly certifying the actual machine code. Unfortunately, these systems cannot get rid of the dependency on a trusted garbage collector. Indeed, constructing a provably type-safe garbage collector is one of the major open problems in the area of certifying compilation.
Building on an idea by Wang and Appel, we present a series of new techniques for writing type-safe stop-and-copy garbage collectors. We show how to use intensional type analysis to capture the contract between the mutator and the collector, and how the same method can be applied to support forwarding pointers and generations. Unlike Wang and Appel (which requires whole-program analysis), our new framework directly supports higher-order funtions and is compatible with separate compilation; our collectors are written in provably type-safe languages with rigorous semantics and fully formalized soundness proofs.
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Published In
May 2001
330 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/381694
- Editors:
- Cindy Norris,
- James B. Bergin
Copyright © 2001 ACM.
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Publication History
Published: 01 May 2001
Published in SIGPLAN Volume 36, Issue 5
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