Garbage Collection Can Be Faster Than Stack Allocation
Report ID: TR-045-86Author: Appel, Andrew W.
Date: 1986-06-00
Pages: 6
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Abstract:
Optimizing LISP compilers try to deduce which closures (function-call frames) may be stack-allocated, because heap-allocated closures must be garbage-collected at (presumably) great expense. In fact, with enough memory, garbage-collection becomes cheaper than decrementing a stack pointer. Special hardware, intricate garbage-collection algorithms, and fancy compiler analysis become unnecessary.