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Integrating region memory management and tag-free generational garbage collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2021

MARTIN ELSMAN Open the ORCID record for MARTIN ELSMAN [Opens in a new window]  and
NIELS HALLENBERG
MARTIN ELSMAN
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, Denmark, (e-mail: mael@di.ku.dk)
NIELS HALLENBERG
Affiliation:
SimCorp A/S, Denmark, (e-mail: niels.hallenberg@simcorp.com)
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Abstract

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We present a region-based memory management scheme with support for generational garbage collection. The scheme features a compile-time region inference algorithm, which associates values with logical regions, and builds on a region type system that deploys region types at runtime to avoid the overhead of write barriers and to support partly tag-free garbage collection. The scheme is implemented in the MLKit Standard ML compiler, which generates native x64 machine code. Besides demonstrating a number of important formal properties of the scheme, we measure the scheme’s characteristics, for a number of benchmarks, and compare the performance of the generated executables with the performance of executables generated with the MLton state-of-the-art Standard ML compiler and configurations of the MLKit with and without region inference and generational garbage collection enabled. Although region inference often serves the purpose of generations, combining region inference with generational garbage collection is shown often to be superior to combining region inference with non-generational collection despite the overhead introduced by a larger amount of memory waste, due to region fragmentation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 31 , 2021 , e4
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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