Garbage collector

• US 10,628,306 B2
• Filed: 02/01/2017
• Issued: 04/21/2020
• 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.
• Primary Examiner(s): Moser, Bruce M
• Application Number:
  US15/422,102
• Publication Number:
  US 20180217927A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,175 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, wherein the tunable parameter includes an amount of free space at a garbage collection trigger having a preselected goal amount of memory space and an error amount of memory space.

2. The method of claim 1 comprising:

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

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the preselected goal amount and the error amount are ratios.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the concurrent garbage collection is triggered based on the amount of free space at the garbage collection trigger of the previous garbage collection multiplied by a constant.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein an output includes an amount of memory that will be consumed in the free space before the next concurrent garbage collection is triggered.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the preselected goal amount is user configurable.

7. The method of claim 1 further including younger generation garbage collection.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the younger generation garbage collection is non-concurrent garbage collection.

9. 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 including a present error value and a past error value.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the past error value is a previous trigger.

11. The system of claim 10 where the previous trigger is an amount of free space at the start of a previous garbage collection.

12. The system of claim 9 wherein the present error value is an error amount multiplied by a constant.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the error amount is a difference between a previous amount of free memory space and a goal amount of free memory space.

14. The system of claim 9 further comprising a future trend amount.

15. A computer readable medium to store computer readable instructions to control a processor to reclaim memory, 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 including a present error value and a past error value.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15 further comprising a future trend amount.