Autonomous garbage collection: resolving memory leaks in long-running server applications

We demonstrate the benefits of a garbage collection technique that requires neither programmer assistance nor rebuilding (compiling or linking) of tar get applications. That is, our approach effectively mitigates performance d egeneration due to memory leaks in applications when the source and object code are unavailable. Our technique is an extension of the garbage collecti on method known as conservative garbage collection. We refer to our approac h as autonomous garbage collection. Autonomous garbage collection is especi ally useful for long running server applications in large-scale information processing server environments. Our prototype demonstrates that this garba ge collection technique is feasible. Our experimental results show that thi s technique is more general and easier to use than many of the previous gar bage collection proposals targeted at resolving memory leaks in non-coopera tive server applications. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserve d.