Reliable Real-Time Garbage Collection of C++

Garbage collection of C++ offers the potential of improving prograrnmer productivity, reducing the occurrence of dynamic memory management errors in both prototype and production software, and increasing the level of abstraction provided by many reusable software components. The hardware-assisted real-time garbage collection system described in this paper offers the additional benefits of providing more predictable memory utilization and response times than are available from traditional dynamic memory management techniques for C++. This paper describes a C++ dialect that allows real-time garbage collection of heap-allocated objects in a manner that is compatible with traditional real-time development methodologies. This paper also provides a brief overview of established methodologies for development of reliable real-time software, with emphasis on issues that are relevant to garbage collection, and summarizes the shortcomings of existing real-time garbage collection techniques. @ 1994 The USENIX Association, Computing Systems, Vol. 7 . No. 4 . Fall L994 467