Scalable hardware-algorithm for mark-sweep garbage collection

The memory-intensive nature of object-oriented languages such as C++ and Java has created the need for high-performance dynamic memory management. Object-oriented applications often generate higher memory intensity in the heap region. Thus, a high-performance memory manager is needed to cope with such applications. As today's VLSI technology advances, it becomes increasingly attractive to map software algorithms such as malloc(), free() and garbage collection into hardware. This paper presents a hardware design of a sweeping function (for mark-and-sweep garbage collection) that fully utilizes the advantages of combinational logic. In our scheme, the bit sweep can detect and sweep the garbage in a constant time. Bit-map marking in software can improve the cache performance and reduce number of page faults; however, it often requires several instructions to perform a single mark. In our scheme, only one hardware instruction is required per mark. Moreover, since the complexity of the sweeping phase is often higher than the marking phase, the garbage collection time may be substantially improved. The hardware complexity of the proposed scheme (bit-sweeper) is O(n), where n represents the size of the bit map.