Myths and realities: the performance impact of garbage collection

This paper explores and quantifies garbage collection behavior for three whole heap collectors and generational counterparts: copying semi-space, mark-sweep, and reference counting, the canonical algorithms from which essentially all other collection algorithms are derived. Efficient implementations in MMTk, a Java memory management toolkit, in IBM’s Jikes RVM share all common mechanisms to provide a clean experimental platform. Instrumentation separates collector and program behavior, and performance counters measure timing and memory behavior on three architectures. Our experimental design reveals key algorithmic features and how they match program characteristics to explain the direct and indirect costs of garbage collection as a function of heap size on the SPEC JVM benchmarks. For example, we find that the contiguous allocation of copying collectors attains significant locality benefits over free-list allocators. The reduced collection costs of the generational algorithms ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SIGMETRICS
• Authors: Stephen M. Blackburn, Perry Cheng, Kathryn S. McKinley
• Keywords: Collection Algorithms, Garbage Collection, Garbage Collection Behavior, SIGMETRICS 2004