CRAMM: Virtual Memory Support for Garbage-Collected Applications

Existing virtual memory systems usually work well with applications written in C and C++, but they do not provide adequate support for garbage-collected applications. The performance of garbage-collected applications is sensitive to heap size. Larger heaps reduce the frequency of garbage collections, making them run several times faster. However, if the heap is too large to fit in the available RAM, garbage collection can trigger thrashing. Existing Java virtual machines attempt to adapt their application heap sizes to fit in RAM, but suffer performance degradations of up to 94% when subjected to bursts of memory pressure. We present CRAMM (Cooperative Robust Automatic Memory Management), a system that solves these problems. CRAMM consists of two parts: (1) a new virtual memory system that collects detailed reference information for (2) an analytical model tailored to the underlying garbage collection algorithm. The CRAMM virtual memory system tracks recent reference behavior with low...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: OSDI
• Authors: Ting Yang, Emery D. Berger, Scott F. Kaplan, J. Eliot B. Moss
• Keywords: Heap Size, Heap Sizing Model, Operating System, OSDI 2006, Virtual Memory