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Vectorized garbage collection

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Abstract

Garbage collection can be done in vector mode on supercomputers like the CRAY-2 and the Cyber 205. Both copying collection and mark-and-sweep can be expressed as breadth-first searches in which the “queue” can be processed in parallel. We have designed a copying garbage collector whose inner loop works entirely in vector mode. We give performance measurements of the algorithm as implemented for Lisp CONS cells on the Cyber 205. Vector-mode garbage collection performs up to nine times faster than scalar-mode collection-a worthwhile improvement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, 08544, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Andrew W. Appel & Aage Bendiksen

Authors
  1. Andrew W. Appel
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  2. Aage Bendiksen
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Additional information

Supported in part by NSF Grants DCR-8603543 and CCR-8806121, and by a Digital Equipment Corp. Faculty Incentive Grant.

Supported by the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

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Appel, A.W., Bendiksen, A. Vectorized garbage collection. J Supercomput 3, 151–160 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00127826

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00127826

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