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Allocation regions & implementation contracts

  • Improving Locality
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Memory Management (IWMM 1992)

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

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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to advocate the use of two intermediate level abstractions named allocation region and implementation contract as the interface of language-independent memory management systems (MMS).

The allocation regions are both sets of objects and memory domains (sets of pages or sets of segments.) The implementation contracts represent symbolically the capabilities of the memory management system: the set of object formats and collection policies it supports. These two concepts give an intermediate level of abstraction to describe and compare most existing garbage collected MMS. We go further and advocate a full support for this level of abstraction through a flexible memory management interface: the allocation becomes a two step process in which (i) an allocation region is created with an attached implementation contract, and (ii) objects are allocated in the region. We show how to implement the abstraction, and how to take advantage of it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill rd, 94304, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    V. Delacour

  2. INRIA, Domaine de Voluceau, 78153, Le Chesnay Cedex, France

    V. Delacour

Authors
  1. V. Delacour
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Yves Bekkers Jacques Cohen

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Delacour, V. (1992). Allocation regions & implementation contracts. 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/BFb0017205

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0017205

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55940-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47315-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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