Patent ID: 7930325

Claim:
A method of performing parallel, hierarchical copying garbage collection (GC) to achieve a hierarchical copy order of a set of objects with parallel garbage collection threads, wherein said objects are related in a from-space in a given hierarchical order including one or more first generation objects, one or more second generation objects, and one or more third generation objects, each of the second generation objects being a child of one of the first generation objects, and each of the third generation objects being a child of one of the second generation objects, the method comprising the steps of: executing a plurality of threads in parallel to copy said set of objects in said hierarchical order from the from-space to a multitude of blocks in a to-space including copying all of the first generation objects from the from-space to the to-space, then copying all of the second generation objects from the from-space to the to-space, and then copying all of the third generation objects from the from-space to the to-space, said multitude of blocks including copy blocks and scan blocks, including the steps of: copying some of the objects from the from-space into the copy blocks in the to-space; scanning the scan blocks to identify additional objects in the from-space, and copying said additional objects into the copy blocks in the to-space; and aliasing the copy blocks in the to-space.