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RE: gcj mingw32 and java memory footprint.
- From: Jeff Sturm <jsturm at one-point dot com>
- To: Norbert Frese <norbertf at gmx dot net>
- Cc: "Boehm, Hans" <hans_boehm at hp dot com>, "'java at gcc dot gnu dot org '" <java at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 23:11:59 -0500 (EST)
- Subject: RE: gcj mingw32 and java memory footprint.
On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Norbert Frese wrote:
> just a theoretical reflection: would it be possible to combine a tracing
> collector with reference counting?
Sure that's possible. I don't know if it would be a win for gcj.
> but i guess there is no way to use such model with gcj, because it would
> require a lot of macros for reference copying... and i'm sure there are a
> lot of other problems involved with reference counting which i don't really
> know about... (threads, performance...)
Gcj itself could be modified to generate code for reference counting, so
it's not exactly impossible. However:
The size of every object would increase to store the ref count. That
might defeat the space savings you're after.
The atomic increment/decrement you'd need could impact performance
severely, I'd guess. Also the size of generated code would increase.
I think it would be an interesting experiment, difficulties
notwithstanding.
Jeff