[gclist] Name that hypothesis

[Henry G. Baker]

> Henry Baker wrote, in excerpts from two messages:
> 
> > If the 'null hypothesis' is that the likelihood of
> > dying is completely independent of how long you have lived already,
> > then the 'generational hypothesis' is one that says that young objects
> > die even more often than would be expected by this null hypothesis.
> > 
> > Now second order effects -- e.g., cache locality -- might allow you
> > to take advantage of even the 'null hypothesis', but to win better than
> > this you will need the 'generational hypothesis'.
> 
> The claims Henry is making here are commonly believed, but
> they are not true unless you take a very narrow view of
> generational garbage collection.  I have designed, simulated,
> and analyzed a generational collector that derives a clear
> first order advantage over non-generational collectors for
> the radioactive decay model Henry proposed in SIGPLAN Notices,
> April 1993.  This advantage can be demonstrated with a
> perfectly uniform memory system.
> 
> Henry's claims are probably true of all generational collectors
> that are being used for production work in 1996.  I just want to
> warn that Henry is talking about current practice, not theory.
> 
> William D Clinger

Will:

I think that we've discussed this before, but I don't seem to have any
description of your system handy.  Do you have a short description of
a mathematical model and a proof of your scheme?

The problem with measurements is that they raise more questions than
they answer.

-- 
Henry Baker
www/ftp directory:
ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html