Predicting Lifetimes in Dynamically Allocated Memory
David A. Cohn, Harlequin Inc, Satinder Singh · 1996
Predictions of lifetimes of dynamically allocated objects can be used to improve time and space efficiency of dynamic memory management in computer programs. Barrett and Zorn [1993] used a simple lifetime predictor and demonstrated this improvement on a variety of computer programs. In this paper, we use decision trees to do lifetime prediction on the same programs and show significantly better prediction. Our method also has the advantage that during training we can use a large number of features and let the decision tree automatically choose the relevant subset. 1 INTELLIGENT MEMORY ALLOCATION Dynamic memory allocation is used in many computer applications. The application requests blocks of memory from the operating system or from a memory manager when needed and explicitly frees them up after use. Typically, all of these requests are handled in the same way, without any regard for how or for how long the requested block will be used. Sometimes programmers use runtime profiles to a...