AW: How to pin/avoid gc for an oop?

[David Holmes]

On 11/03/2017 9:08 PM, Christian Hagedorn wrote:
> Thank you for your answers. If it is possible to do it in the JVM I would prefer to do that.
>
> I have tried to maintain an array of handles. However I think I have not understood its usage correctly. I only saw examples by allocating it on the stack with Handle h1(thread, oop). But how can I create a handle on the heap such that it is kept alive for an access later? It asserts not to call the global operator "new" such that "new Handle(..)" does not work.

Sorry that was incorrect advice. Handles are per-thread so you can't 
have a data structure storing them across threads.

> How could  I make the log  a GC root?

GC folk should chime in on the details of that - I don't want to give 
more bad advice.

David

> Christian
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: David Holmes [mailto:david.holmes at oracle.com]
> Gesendet: Samstag, 11. März 2017 04:58
> An: Christian; Jon V.
> Cc: hotspot-dev at openjdk.java.net
> Betreff: Re: How to pin/avoid gc for an oop?
>
> On 10/03/2017 6:56 PM, Christian wrote:
>> Hi Jon,
>>
>> The STM is to be integrated into the JVM, but the transactional
>> execution only affects modifications to the managed memory done by
>> bytecode instructions. JVM internal structures are unaffected.
>>
>> Here an example:
>>
>> class X {
>>    int f;
>>
>>    public static update(X x, int _new) {
>>       atomic { // tx start
>>          // (1) update field f of x:
>>
>>          // undo log maintains a reference to x and old value of f
>>          // note: x contains a direct reference to the lock
>>
>>          x.f = _new;
>>
>>          // (2) assume GC is run
>>          // Note: The atomic section can be large and blocking,
>>          // thus, inhibiting a GC run is not an option.
>>
>>          // (3) End of the atomic section (tx end):
>>          // 1. In case of abort: restore old value
>>          // 2. Release lock (obtained via reference to x)
>>       }
>>    }
>> }
>>
>> How can I assure that the reference to x in the undo log that I made
>> at
>> (1) remains valid at (3), even though a GC run may occur at (2)? I
>
> My making sure the GC sees everything in the undo log. The details will depend on how you propose to implement that log.
>
>> thought that Handles (share/vm/runtime/handles.hpp) may be an option,
>> but I might have misunderstood what they are used for. I can of course
>
> Handles are used inside the VM to protect oops when we need to use them across calls that might lead to safepoint checks and thus to GC occurring.
>
>> make the undo log in the managed heap as well, but I hoped that this
>> can be done directly in the JVM.
>
> There are a number of ways to do this. If your log is a native VM data structure then it might store Handles. Or you could make the log a GC root and make it known to the GC, and store oops directly.
>
> Or you could implement it all in Java - which is probably a lot simpler, albeit likely less performant.
>
> David
>
>>
>> Am 9. März 2017, 21:12, um 21:12, "Jon V." <sybersnake at gmail.com> schrieb:
>>> Are you trying to build a transactional memory system for the JVM or
>>> your own Java code?
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 2:33 PM Christian <ch-hagedorn at hispeed.ch>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Jon,
>>>>
>>>> I need this for an undo log of a transactional memory system with
>>>> pessimistic locking/eager version management.
>>>> Am 9. März 2017, um 19:00, "Jon V." <sybersnake at gmail.com> schrieb:
>>>>
>>>> Can you clarify what you mean by Undo and why you think this should
>>> be
>>>> done at the VM level so we can better understand the request.
>>>>
>>>> If you don't want something to be garbage collected then simply
>>>> don't dereference it.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 12:38 PM Christian Hagedorn
>>> <ch-hagedorn at hispeed.ch>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I want to implement an undo functionality and thus need to access an
>>> oop
>>>> even when it is out of scope in the Java code. How can I pin such an
>>> oop to
>>>> avoid garbage collection of its used memory?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>>
>>>> Christian
>>>>
>>>>
>