Supporting precise garbage collection in Java Bytecode-to-C ahead-of-time compiler for embedded systems

A Java bytecode-to-C ahead-of-time compiler (AOTC) can improve the performance of a Java virtual machine (JVM) by translating bytecode into C code, which is then compiled into machine code via an existing C compiler. Although AOTC is effective in embedded Java systems, a bytecode-to-C AOTC could not easily employ precise garbage collection (GC) due to a difficulty in making a GC map, which keeps information on where each root live object is located when GC occurs. This is one of the reasons why all previous JVMs using a bytecode-to-C AOTC employed conservative GC, which can lead to poorer GC performance with more frequent memory shortage, especially in embedded systems where memory is tight. In this paper, we propose a way of allowing precise GC in a bytecode-to-C AOTC by generating additional C code which collects GC map-equivalent information at runtime. In order to reduce this runtime overhead, we also propose two optimization techniques which remove unnecessary C code. Our experim...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: CASES
• Authors: Dong-Heon Jung, Sung-Hwan Bae, Jaemok Lee, Soo-Mook Moon, Jong Kuk Park
• Keywords: Bytecode-to-c Aotc, CASES 2006, Precise Garbage Collection, Precise Gc