Autonomous garbage collection: resolving memory leaks in long running network applications

Abstract

Garbage collection is especially useful for long running server applications in network environments since sustained memory leaks continuously degrade performance and eventually result in application failure. We demonstrate the benefits of a garbage collection technique that effectively mitigates performance degeneration due to memory leaks in applications when source code or object code are not available. Our technique is an extension of the garbage collection method known as conservative garbage collection. We refer to this as autonomous garbage collection. Our prototype demonstrates that this garbage collection technique is indeed feasible. Furthermore, our experimental results show that this technique is more general and easier to use than many of the previous garbage collection proposals targeted at resolving memory leaks in non-cooperative server applications.