6423256: marking stacks should use a chunked data structure

[Keith McGuigan]

Hi Scott -

I'm forwarding this to the hotspot-gc-dev mailing list.  If anyone is 
working on it, they'll be on that list (maybe this one too, but just in 
case).

--
- Keith

Scott Marlow wrote:
> Is anyone working on this bug yet?  From the bug report 
> http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6423256, it sounds 
> like someone started the work already.  I would like to help with the 
> issue (either testing a proposed fix or submitting one).
> 
> The bug report contains this text:
> 
> "
> The marking stack used by MarkSweep currently uses a GrowableArray<oop>. 
> That's overkill, since we only use the marking stack as a stack. In 
> contrast, GrowableArray implements an array, so when it expands, it 
> reallocs and copies the whole array to a new, larger, piece of 
> contiguous memory. Since the marking stack is often large, this often 
> requires a large contiguous chunk of memory, which can be difficult to 
> acquire. Since GrowableArray grows by doubling, on average 25% of the 
> array will be empty. When the marking stack is large, this can be a 
> substantial waste of space.
> 
> Instead, the stack could be implemented as a chained series of small 
> regions.  This could allow us to balance the storage for the chain 
> pointers  against the increment of growth, to use an appropriate amount 
> of space in modest chunks.
> Posted Date : 2006-05-08 23:47:21.0
> "
> 
> 
> Scott
>