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.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
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.
Dickman, P. Optimising weighted reference counts for scalable fault-tolerant distributed object-support systems. (submitted to publication), 1992.
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.
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.
Ladin, R., and Liskov, B. Garbage collection of a distributed heap. In Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Sys. (Yokohama (Japan), June 1992).
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).
Lins, R. D. Cyclic reference counting with lazy mark-scan. Tech. Rep. TR-77, University of Kent, Computing Labotory Canterbury (England), Aug. 1991.
Lins, R. D., and Jones, R. Cyclic weighted reference counting. Tech. Rep. TR-95, University of Kent, Computing Labotory Canterbury (England, Mar. 1992.
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.
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.
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.
Piquer, J. M.Parallélisme et distribution en Lisp. PhD thesis, Ecole Polytechnique, Massy France, Jan. 1991.
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.
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.
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights 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