Cheney's algorithm: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:59, 17 May 2022

Revision as of 10:00, 11 January 2023

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{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2021}}

{{more footnotes|date=April 2014}}

'''Cheney's algorithm''', first described in a 1970 [[Association for Computing Machinery|ACM]] paper by C.J. Cheney, is a [[stop and copy]] method of [[tracing garbage collection]] in computer software systems. In this scheme, the [[Memory management#DynamicManual memory allocationmanagement|heap]] is divided into two equal halves, only one of which is in use at any one time. Garbage collection is performed by copying live objects from one semispace (the from-space) to the other (the to-space), which then becomes the new heap. The entire old heap is then discarded in one piece. It is an improvement on the previous stop and copy technique.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}}

Cheney's algorithm reclaims items as follows: