Method of delaying space allocation for parallel copying garbage collection

摘要

The present invention relates to a method of delaying space allocation for parallel copying garbage collection in a data processing system comprising a memory divided in a current area (from-space) used by at least a program thread during current program execution and reserve area (to-space), and wherein a copying garbage collection is run in parallel by several collector threads, the garbage collection consisting in stopping the program threads and flipping the roles of the current area and reserved area before copying into the reserved area the live objects stored in the current area. Such a method comprises the steps of checking (12) by one collector thread the live objects of the current area to be copied in said reserved area, the live objects being referenced by a list of pointers; storing for each live object, a record into an allocation log, this record including at least the address of the object and its size; adding (14) the object size to a total_size which is the accumulated size of all the checked objects for which a record has been stored in the allocation log; and copying (20) all the checked objects into the reserved area when the value of total_size reaches a predetermined allocation bound.