Patent ID: 7472145
Filing Date: 2008-12-30
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method of generating compact garbage collection tables for identifying a root set of pointers to a heap in a call stack the method comprising: generating a first call site table storing call site identifiers, each call site identifier identifying the location of a call site in a computer program; generating a final descriptor table storing a set of unique descriptors to be associated with one or more stack frames by a garbage collector, each unique descriptor describing a set of registers containing pointers to the heap and a set of offsets relative to a location within each of the one or more stack frame containing pointers to the heap, wherein duplicate descriptors are eliminated by mapping a plurality of call site identifiers associated with the same descriptor to a single unique descriptor in the final descriptor table; and generating a descriptor reference table associated with the first call site table, each entry in the descriptor reference table mapping a call site identifier in the first call site table to one of the unique descriptors in the final descriptor table, wherein the descriptor reference table maps the call site identifier in the first call site table to one of the unique descriptors based upon a count that is incremented for each new unique descriptor.