8.12
Garbage Collection
1 Introduction
Read these notes on automated memory management by Shriram Krishnamurthi, Ben Lerner and Joe Gibbs Politz.
2 Core concepts
Manual memory management (malloc/free, free list(s))
Reference counting (MF Part 1 - slides MF)
Garbage collection algorithm (MF Part 2 - link above)
Two-space copying collectors (Cheney’s algorithm, and MF Part 3 - link above)
"MF" above refers to lecture slides by Matthew Flatt, provided here with his permission, not for further distribution.
3 Additional material
Overview of the Java GC - in particular look at the description of the generational GC, and the many GC parameters of a modern JVM.
Survey of GC Techniques [Wilson, 1992]