Summary: Better Static Memory Management: Improving Region­Based Analysis
of Higher­Order Languages
(Extended Abstract)
Alexander Aiken \Lambda Manuel F˜ ahndrich Raph Levien y
Computer Science Division
University of California, Berkeley z
Abstract
Static memory management replaces runtime garbage collec­
tion with compile­time annotations that make all memory al­
location and deallocation explicit in a program. We improve
upon the Tofte/Talpin region­based scheme for compile­time
memory management [TT94]. In the Tofte/Talpin approach,
all values, including closures, are stored in regions. Region
lifetimes coincide with lexical scope, thus forming a runtime
stack of regions and eliminating the need for garbage col­
lection. We relax the requirement that region lifetimes be
lexical. Rather, regions are allocated late and deallocated as
early as possible by explicit memory operations. The place­
ment of allocation and deallocation annotations is determined
by solving a system of constraints that expresses all possible

Source: Aiken, Alex - Department of Computer Science, Stanford University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences