[Python-ideas] Multi-core reference count garbage collection

[Stephan Houben]

Hi Jonathan,

2018-07-19 8:33 GMT+02:00 Jonathan Fine <jfine2358 at gmail.com>:

> I call any such scheme BUFFERED multi-core reference count garbage
> collection. The worker processes know nothing about how garbage collection
> is managed. Instead, they pass over to the GC process sufficient
> information to allow it to manage the garbage.
>

This is actually a known idea (which is GOOD, unless you wanted to apply
for a patent ;-) ).

It is described, among other places, in
"The Garbage Collection Handbook: The Art of Automatic Memory Management",
by Richard Jones, Antony Hosking, Eliot Moss.

In fact, they also call it buffered reference counting.
Section 18.2: Buffered Reference Counting:
"...DeTreville[1990] had log mutators the old and new referents of each
pointer update to a buffer"

By the way, this book describes a ton of other ideas to speed up
reference counting in general and in the concurrent case, so
it may be worthwhile to get it.

I should warn you that many of these advanced refcounting ideas have been
proposed in the past already, although I am unaware of this particular
technique
having been implemented.

Stephan
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