Region-based Memory Management: An Evaluation of its Support in RTSJ

M. TERESA HIGUERA-TOLEDANO; SERGIO YOVINE; DIEGO GARBERVETSKY

Distributed, Embedded and Real-Time Java Systems

Springer

Año: 2012; p. 101 - 127

Memory management is a source of unpredictability in the execution time of Java programs. This is because garbage collection introduces possibly unbounded block- ing pauses to threads, which is unacceptable in real-time systems. To cope with this problem, the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) adopts a region-based approach which relies on memory scopes that are automatically freed upon termination of their lifetime. This allows the turning off of garbage collection during the execution of critical tasks, thus ensuring real-time guarantees. This chapter explains the RTSJ memory model and proposes improvements to its suggested implementation. It also discusses a static analysis-based approach to ensure that memory scopes are correctly use and dimensioned at compile time.