Efficient reference classification and quick memory reuse in a system that supports concurrent garbage collection

Abstract

The disclosed embodiments facilitate reusing both the physical and virtual memory in a garbage-collected computing environment immediately after a relocated memory area has been emptied, without using special hardware or operating system extensions. This system uses load barrier to perform fast checks to determine if a reference might point into a relocated memory area. If so, the load barrier performs further actions to remap pointers that actually point into the relocated memory area, without the need to read that memory. Because the system neither follows pointers into relocated memory areas nor protects relocated memory areas, the system can immediately reuse the virtual memory areas. The load barrier ensures that references pointing into a relocated memory area will be caught and handled, and references pointing into the newly allocated memory will pass through the barrier without further actions.