Primary reading: Garbage Collection Handbook, Garbage Collection | GC FAQ, GC Techniques and algorithms, GC Language Interfaces, and "more difficult topics" | Ravenbrook Memory Management Reference

Concepts/terminology

Memory Allocation schemes (high-level)

Heap management (aka garbage collection) strategies

Wikipedia: Tracing garbage collection

Automated memory management (GC) almost always refers to heap management; I've never heard it applied to any other (static or stack) form of memory allocation and reclamation. Several strategies are possible (and numerous hybrid approaches):

Ironically, many of these strategies could be used in custom allocation/deallocation schemes in C/C++, but typically aren't due to the complexity of memory management; specifically, C++'s inability to allow for the "movement" of objects as part of the process. This inability to move objects around in memory (that is, specifically, to track where the object ends up and "backport" the new location to the already-existing pointers pointing to it) leads to excessive fragmentation over time, and that in turn can lead to inability to satisfy an allocation request--no one "hole" in the memory space is large enough to accommodate the request, despite there being enough total memory to do so.

Additional concepts

Glossary/Jargon

Papers/articles/notes

C/C++

.NET

Java

Python


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Last modified 06 April 2022