Implementing heap-object behavior prediction efficiently and effectively

Abstract

Heap-allocated objects play an important role in many modern programs. Various results have shown the overall performance of these programs can be improved by increasing the reference locality of heap-allocated objects. In this paper we describe an approach that improves the virtual memory performance of allocation-intensive C programs by predicting the reference behavior and lifetime of heap objects as they are allocated. We further describe an implementation of our prediction algorithm and evaluate its performance on real programs. As part of our implementation, we present a low-overhead algorithm to minimize the cost of gathering run-time stack information. Finally, we show that an implementation of these algorithms has little overhead and can improve the virtual memory and TLB performance of programs substantially. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.