LISP and Symbolic Computation, 3(2)135-170

Mark Scan Garbage Collection on a Distributed Architecture

Margaret H. Derbyshire, Dept. of Computer Science, The University, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, England

Abstract: In any computer architecture designed for the evaluation of declarative languages, efficient reclamation of redundant (garbage) storage is essential. High performance, exploiting the inherent parallelism of such languages, is now typically achieved by parallel architectures, computational graphs thus being distributed across many processing elements.

This paper describes a real-time mark-scan garbage collection algorithm for a distributed machine with local store. The algorithm allows collection on a per-process basis, and several collections may run concurrently and asynchronously. Both non real-time and real-time versions are provided.

It is hoped to publish implementation results for the algorithm when such are available.

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March 2003 - hosc@brics.dk