© Thomas Kunz 2000
SCE 574
221
   Garbage Collection
äGarbage collection is a reorganization of the heap to decrease fragmentation
äWe can merge adjacent free blocks to make larger blocks (easy to do)
äTheoretically you could move data and change pointers to the data in the application program to decrease fragmentation (note: this is difficult)
ä
ä
ä
ä
ä
ä
äTools for managing a heap
äHeap statistics
äGive frequency with which each block size was used
äNumber of times blocks are fragmented  and merged
äConfiguration utilities
äSetting an initial configuration for a heap
Free
Free
Fragmented
Heap
Unfragmented
Heap