Generational Reference Counting: A Reduced-Communication Distributed Storage Reclamation Scheme

Abstract

This paper describes generational reference counting, a new distributed storage reclamation scheme for loosely-coupled multiprocessors. It has a significantly lower communication overhead than distributed versions of conventional reference counting. Although generational reference counting has greater computational and space requirements than ordinary reference counting, it may provide a significant saving in overall execution time on machines in which message passing is expensive.