Fortune Teller: Improving Garbage Collection Performance in Server Environment using Live Objects Prediction
Feng Xian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Currently, the most adopted criterion to invoke garbage col- lection is heap space exhaustion. In other words, garbage collection is invoked when the heap space (either the entire space or generational space) runs out. A much more dif- ficult alternative is to invoke garbage collection whenever good efficiency can be obtained. To do so, we need to know number of garbage objects that can be collected before the collection actually takes place.
In this short abstract, we introduce a predictive approach that can provide an accurate estimation of the number of dead objects at any specific point of execution. The pro- posed estimation model relies on the information obtained from partial reference counting. Our plan is to use this in- formation as a criterion to invoke garbage collection. We have conducted a preliminary study to determine the feasi- bility of this idea and found that the model is sufficiently accurate in three SPECjvm98 benchmark applications.
KEYWORDS: garbage collection, predictive model
