A real-time garbage collection framework for embedded systems

Abstract

Garbage collection is increasingly prevalent as part of the programming landscape, but its use in real-time embedded systems remains problematic. One approach is to separate the specification of the timing requirements of real-time tasks, the memory use behavior of the code that implements them, and the configuration of the memory management system to ensure that the tasks' real-time requirements are met. The Real Time Garbage Collector (RTGC) framework provides common language for describing a broad class of real-time collectors. The notion of an RTGC configuration, based on the framework, provides a target for automating the task of configuring automatic memory management for a real-time system and its workload.