1983/06/01 by Henry Lieberman, Carl Hewitt · 5 citations
Computer Science · #Optimization and Search Problems #Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques #Advanced Data Storage Technologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/358141.358147
openalex publication_date 1983/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
In previous heap storage systems, the cost of creating objects and garbage collection is independent of the lifetime of the object. Since objects with short lifetimes account for a large portion of storage use, it is worth optimizing a garbage collector to reclaim storage for these objects more quickly. The garbage collector should spend proportionately less effort reclaiming objects with longer lifetimes. We present a garbage collection algorithm that (1) makes storage for short-lived objects cheaper than storage for long-lived objects, (2) that operates in real time—object creation and access times are bounded, (3) increases locality of reference, for better virtual memory performance, (4) works well with multiple processors and a large address space.