Parallel garbage collection on a virtual memory system
Since most artificial intelligence applications are programmed in list processing languages, it is important to design architectures to support efficient garbage collection. This paper presents an architecture and an associated algorithm for parallel garbage collection on a virtual memory system. All the previously proposed parallel algorithms attempt to collect cells released by the list processor during the garbage collection cycle. We do not attempt to collect such cells. As a consequence, the list processor incurs little overhead in the proposed scheme, since it need not synchronize with the collector. Most parallel algorithms are designed for shared memory machines which have certain implicit synchronization functions on variable access. The proposed algorithm is designed for virtual memory systems where both the list processor and the garbage collector have private memories. The enforcement of coherence between the two private memories can be expensive and is not necessary in our scheme. 15 refs., 3 figs.
- Research Organization:
- Illinois Univ., Urbana (USA). Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-85ER25001
- OSTI ID:
- 5502264
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/25001-60; CONF-8706138-2; ON: DE88003567
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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