An object memory management solution for small devices with heterogeneous memories

Abstract

Small devices have a specific hardware configuration. In particular, they usually include several types of memories (typically internal and external RAM, EEPROM, Flash), different in quantities and properties. For instance, their access times can be very different. This is an issue for object-oriented solutions such as Java virtual machines which have to perform automatic data reclamation. In this paper, we firstly present results showing that the memory manager (especially the garbage collector) must be adapted to the type of memory it is in charge of. Then, we propose a flexible memory management solution that addresses this issue by assigning a different memory manager to each memory. Each manager can use the allocation and garbage collection schemes adapted to the physical properties of the memory it is in charge of. In order to minimize interactions between memory managers during allocations and garbage collections, we use a special component in charge of placing objects into the different memories. Thereby, our solution brings the benefits of automatic data reclamation to devices with heterogeneous memory spaces.