Improving locality with parallel hierarchical copying GC

ABSTRACT

This paper shows how to reduce cache and TLB misses by changing the order in which a parallel garbage collector copies heap objects. Reducing cache and TLB misses improves program run time. Parallel garbage collection improves scaling on multi-processor machines. Technology trends indicate that both memory locality and multi-processor scaling increase in importance. Our new algorithmis based on the earlier single-threaded "hierarchical decomposi-tion" algorithm by Wilson, Lam, and Moher. This paper presents a thorough evaluation of parallel hierarchical copying, showing that it improves spatial locality, reduces cache and TLB misses, and speeds up 14 out of 26 benchmarks.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Compilers

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Memory management (garbage collection)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Experimentation, Languages, Performance

Keywords:
cache locality, generational, parallel