GARBAGE COLLECTOR

• US 20180217927A1
• Filed: 02/01/2017
• Published: 08/02/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Stephens, Maoni Zhang, Dussud, Patrick H.
• Granted Patent: US 10,628,306 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0261 using reference counting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0269 Incremental or concurrent garbage collection, e.g. in real-time systems G06F12/0261 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0276 Generational garbage collection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/908 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1044 Space efficiency improvement
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/702 Conservative garbage collection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems

Abstract

A method for use with a garbage collector to provide garbage collection is disclosed. The garbage collection is a concurrent garbage collection provided in a dedicated thread concurrently running in a computing device with a mutator thread. The concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on a dynamically tunable parameter from a previous garbage collection in closed loop feedback.

Claims

1. A method of garbage collection in a computing device, comprising:

providing a concurrent garbage collection in a dedicated thread concurrently running in the computing device with a mutator thread;

wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on a dynamically tunable parameter from a previous garbage collection in a closed feedback loop.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the tunable parameter includes an amount of free space at a garbage collection trigger.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the amount of free space at the garbage collection trigger includes a preselected goal amount of memory space and an error amount of memory space.

4. The method of claim 3 comprising:

initializing garbage collection with the goal amount of memory space and an additional amount of memory space.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the goal amount and the error amount are ratios.

6. The method of claim 2 wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on the amount of free space at the garbage collection trigger of the previous garbage multiplied by a constant.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein an output includes an amount of memory that will be consumed in the free space before the next concurrent garbage collection is triggered.

8. The method of claim 2 wherein the preselected goal amount is user configurable.

9. The method of claim 2 further including younger generation garbage collection.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the younger generation garbage collection is non-concurrent garbage collection.

11. A system to reclaim memory, comprising:

a memory device to store a set of instructions; and

a processor to execute the set of instructions to;

provide a concurrent garbage collection in a dedicated thread concurrently running in the computing device with a mutator thread;

wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on closed loop feedback from a previous garbage collection.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on a present error value and past error value.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the past error value is a previous trigger.

14. The system of claim 13 where the previous trigger is an amount of free space at the start of a previous garbage collection.

15. The system of claim 11 wherein the present error value is an error amount multiplied by a constant.

16. The system of claim 15 wherein the error amount is a difference between a previous amount of free memory space and a goal amount of free memory space.

17. The system of claim 12 further comprising a future trend amount.

18. A computer readable medium to store computer readable instructions to control a processor to build a mutable type, the instructions comprising:

provide a concurrent garbage collection in a dedicated thread concurrently running in the computing device with a mutator thread;

wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on a dynamically tunable parameter from a previous garbage collection in a closed loop feedback.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 18 wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on a present error value and past error value.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 19 further comprising a future trend amount.