The art of computer programming, volume 1 (3rd ed.): fundamental algorithms
The art of computer programming, volume 1 (3rd ed.): fundamental algorithms
An Estimate of the Store Size Necessary for Dynamic Storage Allocation
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Anomalous behavior of the fifty-percent rule in dynamic memory allocation
Communications of the ACM
Theory, Volume 1, Queueing Systems
Theory, Volume 1, Queueing Systems
Comparing mark-and sweep and stop-and-copy garbage collection
LFP '90 Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming
Garbage collecting the Internet: a survey of distributed garbage collection
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
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Some programming languages and computer systems use dynamic memory allocation with garbage collection. It would be useful to understand how the utilization of memory depends on the stochastic parameters describing the size and life distributions of the cells. We consider a class of dynamic storage allocation systems which use a first-fit strategy to allocate cells and perform noncompacting garbage collections to recover free memory space when memory becomes fully occupied. A formula is derived for the expected number of holes (available cells) in memory immediately following a garbage collection which specializes to an analogue of Knuth's 'Fifty Percent' rule for nongarbage-collection systems. Simulations confirm the rule for exponentially distributed cell lifetimes. Other lifetime distributions are discussed. The memory-size requirements for noncompacting garbage collection are also analyzed.