Concurrent, parallel, real-time garbage-collection

With the current developments in CPU implementations, it becomes obvious that ever more parallel multicore systems will be used even in embedded controllers that require real-time guarantees. When garbage collection is used in these systems, parallel and concurrent garbage collection brings important performance advantages in the average case. In a real-time system, however, guarantees on the GC’s performance in the worst case are required. This paper explains how the single-CPU real-time GC of the Java implementation JamaicaVM was changed to make it a hard real-time garbage collector that is parallel and concurrent. Parallel means that an arbitrary number of CPUs may perform GC work in parallel, while concurrent means that the GC work can be performed concurrently to the application code without preempting the application. In addition, the single units of work that this garbage collector has to perform are very small and uniform and the total amount of GC work is bounded by a funct...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: IWMM
• Authors: Fridtjof Siebert
• Keywords: Garbage Collection, GC Work, Hardware, IWMM 2010, Real-time