How to gauge disruptions caused by garbage collection: Towards an efficient algorithm
Gabriel Arellano, Edward Hudgins, David Pruitt, Adrian Veliz, Eric Freudenthal, Vladik Kreinovich · scholarworks - UTEP (The University of Texas at El Paso) · 2015
Comprehensive garbage collection is employed on a variety of com-puting devices, including intelligent cell phones. Garbage collection can cause prolonged user-interface pauses. In order to evaluate and compare the disruptiveness of various garbage collection strategies, it is necessary to gauge disruptions caused by garbage collection. In this paper, we de-scribe efficient algorithms for computing metrics useful for this purpose. 1 Formulation of the Problem Practical problem: need to minimize disruptions caused by garbage collection. In many computer-based systems – including mobile devices – it is necessary to periodically perform garbage collection. This computation can interfere with the progress of interactive programs. Garbage collection can cause intermittent prolonged pauses in gesture-driven user interfaces that can severely reduce their usability; see, e.g., [1, 2, 4]. Need to gauge the quality of different garbage collection strategies. To