Patent ID: 7031990

Claim:
For operating a computer system, which includes memory, as a garbage collector that treats at least a generation of a garbage-collected heap in the memory as divided into sections and collects the generation in collection increments with which the garbage collector associates respective collection sets in the generation, a method comprising, in at least some of the collection increments: A) finding references, denominated external references, that are located outside the generation but refer to objects that are located inside the generation, listing the external references thereby found that refer to objects in the collection set, and marking sections of the generation that contain objects to which the external references thereby found refer; B) identifying and including in the collection set at least one section, denominated a dead section, not reachable through a reference chain that includes an external reference thereby found; C) finding references, denominated internal references, that are located inside the generation but outside the collection set and refer to objects that are located inside the collection set; D) evacuating from the collection set objects reachable from outside the collection set without evacuating therefrom any object located in a dead section even if that dead section contains an object referred to by an internal reference; and E) reclaiming the collection set.