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]