Patent ID: 7136887

Claim:
A garbage collection, method comprising: A) treating at least a portion of a garbage-collected heap in the memory as divided into cards with which the garbage collector associates respective card-object-table entries; B) maintaining the card-object-table entries with values selected from a value range that includes: i) at least one of a set of card-object-table entry values, each of which the collector interprets as locator information representing the locations of references in the card with which that entry is associated; and ii) at least one of a set of card-object-table entry values, each of which the collector interprets as locator information representing the location within the card at which is located a start of an object that begins somewhere between the ends of the card with which that entry is associated; C) basing on those interpretations a determination of which locations in the cards contain references; D) determining the reachability of objects from the contents of locations thereby determined to contain references; and E) reclaiming memory space occupied by objects thereby determined not to be reachable.