Re: AW: [Caml-list] The tag bit

[Andreas Rossberg <rossberg@ps.uni-sb.de>]

Christophe Raffalli wrote:
> There is a less costly way to avoid the tag bit in integer: 
> "conservative GC": any int which happens to point in an alloccated block 
> (or only at the beginning if you do not consider C but ML) is considered 
> as a pointer. You will have very few wrong pointers (especially in the 
> second case). Moreover, array of int or float, or block of memory can be 
> tagged with a flag saying they do not old pointer.
> 
> The Boehm GC for C and C++ is very succefull to do that and very often 
> allow you to share data-structure in C as you would in ML (not caring 
> about who will release first the data) and gain both speed and memory.

AFAIK, a conservative collector is not allowed to move anything. Hence 
it is inherently incompatible with compacting and generational GC, like 
used in OCaml (and highly desirable).

Cheers,

	- Andreas

-- 
Andreas Rossberg, rossberg@ps.uni-sb.de

Let's get rid of those possible thingies!  -- TB

-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners