A Fast Write Barrier for Generational Garbage Collectors

Generational garbage collectors need to keep track of references from older to younger generations so that younger generations can be garbage-collected without inspecting every object in the older generation(s) [LH83], [Ung86]. The set of locations potentially containing pointers to newer objects is often called the remembered set [Ung86]. At every store, the system must ensure that the updated location is added to the remembered set if the store creates a reference from an older to a newer object. This mechanism is usually referred to as a write barrier or store check.