A lazy log-keeping mechanism for comprehensive global garbage detection on Amadeus.

Abstract

Global Garbage Detection (GGD) in object-oriented distributed systems requires that each application process maintains some information in support of GGD. Maintaining this information is known as log-keeping. In this paper we describe a low-overhead, log-keeping mechanism which proceeds lazily and avoids race conditions while nevertheless maintaining enough information for comprehensive GGD to take place. KEY WORDS: Object-Oriented Distributed Systems, Comprehensive Global Garbage Detection 1 Introduction Global Garbage Detection (GGD) in object-oriented distributed systems requires that each application process (conventionally called a mutator) maintains some information in support of GGD. Maintaining this information is known as log-keeping. Log-keeping essentially entails keeping track of objects to which references have crossed site boundaries, and therefore become locally "alleged roots."