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Garbage collection in multischeme

  • Part I Parallel Lisp Languages and Programming Models
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Parallel Lisp: Languages and Systems (PSC 1989)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 441))

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Abstract

On stock hardware, our garbage collector commonly takes under 4% of a system's time and less than 0.2 seconds at each occurrence. It provides an unsurpassed mechanism for reclaiming memory and processing resources in a parallel system. Furthermore, the elementary algorithm is easily extended to a parallel implementation that achieves significant performance improvement without slowing down the operation of user programs.

The garbage collector is also an important component of the system when investigating speculative computation. The requirement that the garbage collector recycle tasks that are no longer performing useful work impacts not only the design of internal data structures, but also affects the semantics of continuations in a parallel system.

(preliminary version)

This research was supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was monitored by the Office of Naval Research under contract numbers N00014-83-K-0125, N00014-84-K-0099, N00014-86-K-0180, and MDA903-84-C-0033. Additional funds and resources were provided by BBN Advanced Computers Inc., and the Hewlett-Packard Corporation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brandeis University, 02254-9110, Waltham, MA, USA

    James S. Miller

  2. Encore Computer Corp., 01752-3089, Marlboro, MA, USA

    Barbara S. Epstein

Authors
  1. James S. Miller
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  2. Barbara S. Epstein
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Editor information

Takayasu Ito Robert H. Halstead Jr.

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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Miller, J.S., Epstein, B.S. (1990). Garbage collection in multischeme. In: Ito, T., Halstead, R.H. (eds) Parallel Lisp: Languages and Systems. PSC 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 441. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024153

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024153

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-52782-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47143-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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