[gclist] Name that hypothesis

[Henry G. Baker]

> Perhaps something like "the probability an object will die is inversely
> proportional to its age".  This still leaves "age" undefined, but I
> think its easier to pin a meaning on it than "young" and "old" as
> classifications.
> 
> It's then up to the implementor to define/measure the "death probability
> curve" for a given application and see if it has properties an allocator
> can take advantage of (as Henry pointed out, its only when this curve
> has discontinuities that a generational GC helps).
> 
> 	J

I didn't mean to imply that the curve had to have discontinuities, but
that it had to have a different shape/slope in some places than the
curve for the 'null hypothesis'.  A clever algorithm should then be able
to tune itself to whatever differences exist between the two curves, just
like a clever compression algorithm can take advantage of whatever
redundancies that exist in the input data.

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