[gclist] why malloc/free instead of GC?

[David F. Bacon]

hans,

by "roundtrip" do you mean malloc+free?  i don't understand your statement
about proportionality to object size in GC.  also, why do conservative
collectors dislike large objects?  is it because a floating point number
could cause a dead large object to be retained?

david
----- Original Message -----
From: "Boehm, Hans" <hans_boehm@hp.com>
To: "'Greg Hudson '" <ghudson@MIT.EDU>; "'Basile STARYNKEVITCH '"
<basile@starynkevitch.net>
Cc: <gclist@iecc.com>
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 11:24 PM
Subject: Re: [gclist] why malloc/free instead of GC?


> I would add:
>
> GC object roundtrip times are pretty much unavoidably proportional to the
object size, where malloc + free times can be nearly constant.  If you
allocate primarily large objects, malloc+free will be cheaper.  (For
sufficiently small objects, it usually isn't, at least based on my
measurements.  Conservative collectors like large objects even less.)