Free-Me: a static analysis for automatic individual object reclamation

Garbage collection has proven benefits, including fewer memoryrelated errors and reduced programmer effort. Garbage collection, however, trades space for time. It reclaims memory only when it is invoked: invoking it more frequently reclaims memory quickly, but incurs a significant cost; invoking it less frequently fills memory with dead objects. In contrast, explicit memory management provides prompt low cost reclamation, but at the expense of programmer effort. This work comes closer to the best of both worlds by adding novel compiler and runtime support for compiler inserted frees to a garbage-collected system. The compiler’s free-me analysis identifies when objects become unreachable and inserts calls to free. It combines a lightweight pointer analysis with liveness information that detects when short-lived objects die. Our approach differs from stack and region allocation in two crucial ways. First, it frees objects incrementally exactly when they become unreachable, instead...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: PLDI
• Authors: Samuel Z. Guyer, Kathryn S. McKinley, Daniel Frampton
• Keywords: Garbage Collection, Memory Management, PLDI 2006, Programmer Effort, Programming Languages