Modeling Real-time Garbage Collection Cost

Given the major advantages of productivity and safety, the use of garbage collection (GC) in real-time systems has gained increasing attention. Guaranteeing garbage collection activities’ worst-case execution time (WCET) is necessary for a real-time system to perform scheduling and schedulability analysis. This paper describes a detailed GC cost model for incremental mark-and-sweep GC exemplified by a modified Boehm-Demers-Weiser (BDW) collector. The GC cost model computes the WCET for garbage collection in terms of (1) the performance of collector operations and (2) the garbage collection load offered by a real-time task. Separating these aspects is a step along the road to an engineering approach to garbage collection in real-time systems, allowing prediction of system behavior from knowledge of component behavior and environmental specifications. The model incorporates the cost of write barriers that are needed to support incremental GC. To be useful for real-time systems, a m...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: RTCSA
• Authors: Wei Fu, Carl Hauser
• Keywords: Garbage Collection, GC Cost Model, Real-Time Computing, Real-time Systems, RTCSA 2007