Treffer: Garbage Collection for Large Memory Java Applications

The possible applications of Java range from small applets to large, data-intensive scientific applications allocating memory in the multi-gigabyte range. As a consequence copying garbage collectors can not fulfill the requirements, as large objects can not be copied efficiently. We analyze the allocation patterns and object lifespans for different Java applications and present garbage collection techniques for these. Various heuristics to reduce fragmentation are compared. We propose just--in-- time generated customized marker functions as a promising optimization during the mark--phase. 1 Introduction The programming language Java is used for a wide range of applications ranging from small applets running in a browser to large scientific programs taking hours of computation time and gigabytes of memory. It is difficult to design a garbage collector which performs well under different workloads. The garbage collector for CACAO -- a 64 bit JavaVM for Alpha and MIPS processo.