Automatic memory management techniques for the go programming language

© 2015 Dr. Matthew DavisMemory management is a complicated task. Many programming languages expose such complexities directly to the programmer. For instance, languages such as C or C++ require the programmer to explicitly allocate and reclaim dynamic memory. This opens the doors for many software bugs (e.g., memory leaks and null pointer dereferences) which can cause a program to crash. Automated techniques of memory management were introduced to relieve programmers from managing such complicated aspects. Two automated techniques are garbage collection and region-based memory management. The more common technique, garbage collection, is primarily driven by a runtime analysis (e.g., scanning live memory and reclaiming the bits that are no longer reachable from the program), where as the less common region-based technique performs a static analysis during compilation and determines program points where the compiler can insert memory reclaim operations. Each option has its drawbacks. In the case of garbage collection it can be computationally expensive to scan memory at runtime, often requiring the program to halt execution during this stage. In contrast, region-based methods often require objects to remain resident in memory longer than garbage collection, resulting in a less than optimal use of a system’s resources. This thesis investigates the less common form of automated memory management (region-based) within the context of the relatively new concurrent language Go. We also investigate combining both techniques, in a new way, with hopes of achieving the benefits of a combined system without the drawbacks that each automated technique provides alone. We conclude this work by applying our region-based system to a concurrent processing environment