A Concurrent Copying Garbage Collector for Languages that Distinguish (Im)mutable Data

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of a concurrent compacting garbage collector for languages that distinguish mutable data from immutable data (e.g., ML) as well for languages that manipulate only immutable data (e.g., pure functional languages such as Haskell). The collector runs on shared-memory parallel computers and requires minimal mutator/collector synchronization. No special hardware or operating system support is required.