Generation of Garbage Collector Performance Test Beds Based on Probability Distributions

We propose a profiling tool for experimental evaluation of garbage collection algorithms. Behaviour of the profiler is determined by some probability distributions on object size and life time etc. that are derived from the properties of certain languages or applications. A standard memory management interface allows precise, objective evaluation of several garbage collection algorithms under laboratory conditions using the same profiler parameters. The separation of memory management and language/application we thus achieve can be used for experimental determination of optimal garbage collection strategies for a given situation. Categories ffl Garbage collection (GC) ffl MM performance analysis and optimization tools 1 Introduction Garbage collector performance is one of the key determinants of functional and object-oriented programming systems. Numerous attempts at improvement of garbage collector performance have therefore been published; e.g. [Bak78, Bak93, NO93, ON94, Ung84, W..