Garbage Collection Optimizations

This research investigates garbage collection techniques targeted at multi-tasking client Java environments for high-end mobile devices, i.e. smartphones, MIDs and consumer devices that have a low amount of memory, decreased memory bandwidth and less processing power than regular desktops. Garbage collection of concurrent tasks should be isolated from each other and should guarantee short and regular pause times. Although these are the primary target platforms, we also investigate applications on regular Java virtual machines with high concurrency and large heaps.

Publications

• Thomas Schatzl, Laurent Daynès, Hanspeter Mössenböck:
  Optimized Memory Management for Class Metadata in a JVM
  9th Intl. Conf. on the Principles and Practice of Programming in Java (PPPJ'11), Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, August 24-26, 2011, pp.151-160.
  This work shows that the impact of class metadata memory management on garbage collection is significant. It proposes an approach based on metaspaces and linkset graphs to remove compaction costs and hence significantly decrease tracing and full collection time. These techniques also enable fully isolated class unloading and metadata reclamation in multi-tasking JVMs.