Patent ID: 6874066

Claim:
A method for managing a virtual heap in a virtual machine executing within a device, the method comprising: executing a process within the virtual machine; providing the virtual heap for the process, wherein the virtual heap comprises a store heap comprising a first plurality of cache lines for storing objects for the process, and wherein the virtual heap further comprises an in-memory heap comprising a second plurality of cache lines for caching objects for access by the process during execution, and wherein the store heap and the in-memory heap are comprised in one memory address space, and wherein a cache line is the smallest addressable unit of memory within the memory address space comprising the store heap and the in-memory heap; caching objects for the process executing within the virtual machine in the in-memory heap; the process modifying a first one of the objects for the process in a first cache line in the in-memory heap; and flushing the first cache line from the in-memory heap to the store heap subsequent to said modifying the first one of the objects.