Skip to main content

Experience with a fault-tolerant garbage collector in a distributed lisp system

  • Distributed Systems II
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Memory Management (IWMM 1992)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 637))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In order to evaluate our fault-tolerant distributed garbage collection protocol, we have built a prototype implementation within a distributed Lisp system, Transpive, replacing Piquer's native indirect reference count distributed garbage collector. This paper presents our protocol and highlights implementation issues on Transpive. In particular, we describe the prototype and the alterations required to fit into the Transpive distributed programming model. The message and CPU performance of our protocol are measured and its fault-tolerance evaluated. We conclude that the cost of our protocol is close to Piquers's, although our protocol has greater functionality.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Bevan, D. I. Distributed garbage collection using reference counting. In PARLE'87-Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe (Eindhoven (the Netherlands), June 1987), no. 259 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, pp. 117–187.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Dickman, P. Optimising weighted reference counts for scalable fault-tolerant distributed object-support systems. (submitted to publication), 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Hughes, J. A distributed garbage collection algorithm. In Functional Languages and Computer Architectures (Nancy (France), Sept. 1985), J.-P. Jouannaud, Ed., no. 201 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, pp. 256–272.

    Google Scholar 

  4. J. Chailloux, M. Devin, J. M. H. Le Lisp: A portable and efficient lisp system. In Proc. 1984 ACM Symposium on Lisp and Functionnal Programming (Aug. 1984), pp. 108–120.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Ladin, R., and Liskov, B. Garbage collection of a distributed heap. In Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Sys. (Yokohama (Japan), June 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Lang, B., Queinnec, C., and Piquer, J. Garbage collecting the world. In Proc. of the 19th Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symp. on Principles of Programming Lang. (Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA), Jan. 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Lins, R. D. Cyclic reference counting with lazy mark-scan. Tech. Rep. TR-77, University of Kent, Computing Labotory Canterbury (England), Aug. 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Lins, R. D., and Jones, R. Cyclic weighted reference counting. Tech. Rep. TR-95, University of Kent, Computing Labotory Canterbury (England, Mar. 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Liskov, B., and Ladin, R. Highly-available distributed services and fault-tolerant distributed garbage collection. In Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on the Principles of Distributed Computing (Vancouver (Canada), Aug. 1986), ACM, pp. 29–39.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Mancini, L., and Shrivastava, S. K. Fault-tolerant reference counting for garbage collection in distributed systems. The Computer Jounal 34, 6 (Dec. 1991), 503–513.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Piquer, J. M. Indirect reference-counting, a distributed garbage collection algorithm. In PARLE'91—Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe (Eindhoven (the Netherlands), June 1991), vol. I of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, pp. 150–165.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Piquer, J. M.Parallélisme et distribution en Lisp. PhD thesis, Ecole Polytechnique, Massy France, Jan. 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Plainfossé, D., and Shapiro, M. Distributed garbage collection in the system is good. In Proc. of the International Workshop on Object-Orientation in Operating Systems (1991), pp. 94–99.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Shapiro, M., Gruber, O., and Plainfossé, D. A garbage detection protocol for a realistic distributed object-support system. Rapport de Recherche 1320, Institut National de la Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, Rocquencourt (France), Nov. 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Watson, P., and Watson, I. An efficient garbage collection scheme for parallel computer architectures. In PARLE'87-Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe (Eindhoven (the Netherlands), June 1987), no. 259 in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Yves Bekkers Jacques Cohen

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Plainfossé, D., Shapiro, M. (1992). Experience with a fault-tolerant garbage collector in a distributed lisp system. In: Bekkers, Y., Cohen, J. (eds) Memory Management. IWMM 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 637. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0017186

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0017186

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55940-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47315-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics