Autonomous Garbage Collection: Resolve Memory Leaks In Long Running Server Applications

We demonstrate the benefits of a garbage collection technique that requires neither programmer assistance or rebuilding (compiling or linking) of target applications. Thus, it effectively mitigates performance degeneration due to memory leaks in applications when source code and object code is not available. Our technique is an extension of the garbage collection method known as conservative garbage collection. We refer to this as autonomous garbage collection. Autonomous garbage collection is especially useful for long running server applications in large-scale information processing server environments. Our prototype demonstrates that this garbage collection technique is feasible. Our experimental results show that this technique is more general and easier to use than many of the previous garbage collection proposals targeted at resolving memory leaks in non-cooperative server applications. Resolve Memory Leaks Long Running Server Applications ♦♦ 07/26/98 2 Index Terms dynamic memory allocation, garbage collection, heap storage, information retrieval, memory leaks, object-oriented languages, software performance degeneration