Quantifying the performance of garbage collection vs. explicit memory management

Garbage collection yields numerous software engineering benefits, but its quantitative impact on performance remains elusive. One can compare the cost of conservative garbage collection to explicit memory management in C/C++ programs by linking in an appropriate collector. This kind of direct comparison is not possible for languages designed for garbage collection (e.g., Java), because programs in these languages naturally do not contain calls to free. Thus, the actual gap between the time and space performance of explicit memory management and precise, copying garbage collection remains unknown. We introduce a novel experimental methodology that lets us quantify the performance of precise garbage collection versus explicit memory management. Our system allows us to treat unaltered Java programs as if they used explicit memory management by relying on oracles to insert calls to free. These oracles are generated from profile information gathered in earlier application runs. By execut...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: OOPSLA
• Authors: Matthew Hertz, Emery D. Berger
• Keywords: Explicit Memory Management, Garbage Collection, OOPSLA 2005, Oracles