[gclist] Time-stamping objects...

[Mark Tillotson]

cef@geode.geodesic.com (Charles Fiterman) wrote:

> Generational collectors eliminate fragmentation and if you have enough
> storage are more efficient. 
Generational collectors are in general more time-efficient and reduce
the working set of the GC.  Fragmentation is a separate issue.

> 
> As a disadvantage they need more space to be useful and its hard to
> interface with things like C that expect stuff to stay put.

There is no requirement that a _generational_ GC move objects.  You
are confusing generational with copying [they are fairly orthogonal
concepts].  You can implement a generational GC on top of a mark/sweep
or copying or object-table GC.  Generational techniques help when most
objects contain only pointers to "older" objects and most objects die
young.  This enables you to collect dead young objects without
traversing the entire graph.

__Mark
[ markt@harlequin.co.uk | http://www.harlequin.co.uk/ | +44 1223 873829   ]
[ homepage http://www.hal.com/services/juggle/home/markt@harlequin.co.uk/ ]