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Garbage Collection in the Presence of Remote Objects: An Empirical Study

  • Conference paper
On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2005: CoopIS, DOA, and ODBASE (OTM 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 3761))

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Abstract

Most virtual machine implementations employ generational garbage collection to manage dynamically allocated memory. Studies have shown that these generational schemes work efficiently in desktop-like applications where most objects are short-lived. The performance of generational collectors, however, has been rarely studied in the context of distributed systems.

Given the increasing popularity of such systems, and the distinct type of objects they introduce to support the distributed paradigm, providing insights into their memory allocation behavior could have a large impact on the design of future garbage collection techniques, and in the implementation of such distributed systems as well.

This work presents one of the first attempts to characterize the lifespan of objects in distributed systems. First, we empirically study the differences in lifespan of remote and local objects. Second, we investigate the effects of ephemeral heap size and workload on the lifespan or remote objects. Last, we utilize the insights gained through the experiment to improve the efficiency of a generational collection scheme through the segregation of objects based on their locality.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0115, USA

    Witawas Srisa-an, Mulyadi Oey & Sebastian Elbaum

Authors
  1. Witawas Srisa-an
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  2. Mulyadi Oey
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  3. Sebastian Elbaum
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. STARLab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Bldg G/10, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Robert Meersman

  2. School of Computer Science and Information Technology, RMIT University, Bld 10.10, 376-392 Swanston Street, VIC 3001, Melbourne, Australia

    Zahir Tari

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Srisa-an, W., Oey, M., Elbaum, S. (2005). Garbage Collection in the Presence of Remote Objects: An Empirical Study. In: Meersman, R., Tari, Z. (eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2005: CoopIS, DOA, and ODBASE. OTM 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3761. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11575801_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11575801_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-29738-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32120-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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