# Copyright (C) 2001-2006, Parrot Foundation.
# $Id: infant.pod 45297 2010-03-30 01:33:45Z coke $

=head1 NAME

docs/dev/infant.pod - Infant Mortality

=head1 Overview

We have a garbage collector that needs to detect all dead objects (the process
is called the mark phase of GC). Any Parrot operation that might allocate
memory can potentially trigger a GC mark run (if not enough memory is
available, we need to free up some unused objects to give us enough room to
allocate our new object. But in order to know what can be freed up, we need to
know what's alive, so we do a GC mark run.)

The GC mark run pass begins with a "root set" of objects that are known to be
in use -- the PMC and String registers, the Parrot stack, the global symbol
table, etc.  Each of these objects is scanned for references to other objects,
recursively.  All objects found during this search are regarded as live.
Everything else is considered dead and so is available for reclamation.

The question of what should be in the root set is problematic.  Consider the
case where you've created a PMC. If you immediately stuff it into a register,
then you're all set. But what if you're putting it into an aggregate? If the
aggregate isn't large enough, you'll need to resize it, which might allocate
memory, which might trigger a GC mark run.  And that run may free your
freshly-created PMC.

In this case, the solution is simple: resize the array, if necessary, before
creating the PMC. But many situations are not so simple, and the set of
operations which could conceivably require more memory is vast. This problem is
referred to as the "infant mortality" problem.

Peter Gibbs, Mike Lambert, Dan Sugalski and others have considered various
solutions to this problem. Most of those solutions have been implemented in
some form or other. This document is an attempt to compare and contrast all
such proposals.

=head1 Solution 1: Stack Walking

One possible solution is to add the C stack into the root set. This way,
temporary PMCs that have not yet been anchored to the root set will be found on
the stack and treated as live. Actually, the C stack is insufficient -- you
must also scan through all processor registers, and for some processors there
may be a separate backing store for those registers (eg the Sparc's register
windows).  Uninitialized data on the stack and high alignment requirements for
stackframes can fool the GC system with left over pointers from previous
calls. This is especially a problem for objects which need early destruction.

 + No slowdown in the common case of no dead objects
 + Convenient: the programmer does not need to code differently to
   accommodate the garbage collection system.
 - Unportable. Different processors need different code for scanning
   their registers, stacks, register windows, etc. Also, on some
   architectures you must scan every possible offset into the stack to
   find all the pointers, while on others you must NOT scan every
   possible offset or you'll get a bus error due to a misaligned
   access.
 - Slow mark phase. A full stack walk takes quite a while, and this time
   grows with nested interpreter calls, external code's stack usage, etc.
 - Complex. The stack walk is necessarily conservative, in that it
   must consider every valid pointer on the stack to potentially be a
   traceable object. But some of those pointers may be stale, in which
   case the memory they point to may have been partially reused for
   some other purpose. Everything must operate within certain
   constraints that guarantee that no invalid pointers will be
   dereferenced and trigger a segmentation fault or bus error.
 - Another side effect of the conservative nature of stack walking is
   that the memory for these objects may never be returned to the
   system, because it is always possible that there will be a stale
   pointer lying around on the stack or in a register, and all such
   pointers will be dereferenced.

=head1 Solution 2: Neonate flag

There are several possible variants of the neonate flag, but the basic idea is
to set a flag on newly created objects that prevents them from being collected.
At some point, this flag is cleared -- either as the newborn object is anchored
to the root set, or during the first mark pass after it was anchored, or
explicitly when the object is no longer needed.

 + Portable
 + Can return memory to the system when unneeded
 + Exact: the state of every object is always known precisely (no more
   "this object MIGHT still be reachable")
 - The coder must remember to clear the flag before discarding
   unanchored objects
 - The flag-clearing takes a small amount of time
 - For some variants of this scheme, some time is consumed to clear
   the flag for the common case of rooted objects

=head2 Subspecies of neonate flags

The variants of the neonate idea all hinge on exactly how and when the flag is
cleared.

=head2 Variant 1: explicit

The flag is always explicitly cleared by the coder.

 + Very simple
 + Fast mark phase
 - Slow for unanchored temporaries
 - Slow for anchored objects
 - Easy to forget to clear the flag for unanchored temporaries
 - Easy to forget to clear the flag for anchored objects
 - longjmp() can bypass the clearing

=head2 Variant 2: explicit for temporaries, cleared during anchoring

The flag is explicitly set for temporaries. All routines which anchor an object
to the root set also clear the flag.

 + Simple
 + Fast mark phase
 - Slow for unanchored temporaries
 - Slow for anchored objects
 - Easy to forget to clear the flag for unanchored temporaries
 - Forces all anchoring operations to set the flag (so this disallows
   direct assignment into a PMC register, for example)
 - longjmp() can bypass the clearing

=head2 Variant 3: clear during mark phase

The neonate flag is cleared during the mark phase when an object is encountered
during the recursive root set traversal. (Leopold Toetsch's trick of setting
the live_FLAG during creation is equivalent to this variation, I think.)

 + Simple
 + Fast mark phase (GC already manipulates the flags)
 - If there are multiple mark runs before the object is anchored or
   dies, it will be prematurely freed

=head2 Variant 4: generation count

This is the same as variant 3, except a "generation count" is maintained in the
interpreter so that the neonate flag is only cleared during a later generation.
The generation is incremented only at major control points such between
opcodes, so that there is no chance of unanchored temporaries.

 + Fast mark phase (GC already manipulates the flags)
 - Generation count must be maintained
 - Disallows recursive opcode calls (necessary for eg implementing
   vtable functions in pasm)
 - Can temporarily use more memory (dead objects accumulate during the
   current generation)

In order to allow recursive opcode calls, we could increment the generation
count in more places and make sure nothing is left unanchored at those points,
but that would gradually remove all advantages of this scheme and make it more
difficult to call existing vtable functions (since you never know when they
might start running pasm code.)

=head2 Variant 5: generation stack

Notice that when using a generational count, you really only need to test
whether the current generation is _different_ from an object's creation
generation (which eliminates wraparound problems, too.) So rather than testing
against a single "current" generation, allow a stack of multiple "current"
generations. An object encountered during the mark phase will have its neonate
flag cleared only if it doesn't match any of the "current" generation ids. This
check can be optimized using a conservative bit mask as a preliminary test.

 + Still faster mark phase than stackwalking, though slower than the other
   neonate variants
 - Generation count must be maintained
 - Generation stack must be maintained
 - Disallows longjmp()'ing out of recursive opcode calls
 - Can temporarily use more memory (dead objects accumulate during all
   current generations)

=head2 Variant 6: Generation based on stack depth

Another similar idea is to use a generational system, with the "current
generation" as a value on the C stack, passed as an extra argument after the
interpreter. If a function creates temporary objects it calls other functions
with an increased generational count.  During a mark run, any PMC with a
generation less than the current generation is considered live.  Any PMC with a
generation greater than the current generation is considered free. This works
through longjmps and recursive run_cores.

 + Simple
 + No stack-walking
 + Works through longjmps and recursive run_cores
 + No explicit setting and clearing of flags
 - Needs to change to change the signature of every Parrot function
 - Nested temporaries can survive if there is no mark run between two 
   function calls with increased generation count

=head1 Solution 3: Explicit root set augmentation

=head2 Variant 1: Temporarily anchor objects

Provide a mechanism to temporarily anchor an otherwise unanchored object to the
root set. (eg, have an array of objects associated with the interpreter that
are all considered to be part of the root set.) This has pretty much the same
advantages and disadvantages of explicit neonate flag setting:

 + Simple
 + Fast mark phase
 - Slow for unanchored temporaries
 - Sometimes slow for anchored objects (depending on whether they need
   to be temporarily anchored before the final anchoring)
 - Easy to forget to remove temporaries from the root set
 - Easy to double-anchor objects and forget to remove the temporary
   anchoring
 - longjmp() can bypass the unanchoring

Many of the same or similar variations also apply: objects could be
automatically removed from the temporary anchoring at generation boundaries,
etc.

=head2 Variant 2: Anchor early, anchor often

First place a new PMC in the root set (e.g. a register), then initialise it. If
that's too cumbersome, disable GC; if that's suboptimal, use active anchoring
to some root set linked list for temporary PMCs.

 + Simple
 + Fast mark phase (No stack-walking)
 - GC might be turned off for a long time (Maybe a recursive run_core
   is called)
 - Easy to forget to reenable GC
 - longjmp() can bypass reenabling of GC (this might be hidden in the
   wrapper functions as only one value needs to be restored)

=head2 Variant 3: Use a linked list of frames

The signature of every Parrot function is extended with an extra parameter
which is a parameter to a frame structure. All temporary PMCs needs to put into
such a frame structure. The first parameter of this frame structure is a link
to the previously used frame structure. If a function that can do a mark run is
called a pointer to the current frame is applied. The linked list of frames
represents always an exact list of the active temporaries on the C-stack.

 + Fast mark runs (only the known PMC-pointers are walked)
 + Exact
 + works through recursive run_cores and longjmp()
 - signature of every Parrot function changes
 - Creation of temporaries is complicated (Need to create a frame
   first)


=head1 REFERENCES

=over 4

=item What is neonate?

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=468fc4aebca262f7>

Brent Dax's better description of the problem than I have here

=item Mike Lambert proposing Variant 1

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=b2c1aebf64d6ed9a>

This also has some macro-heavy proposals that I ignored.

=item Leopold Toetsch proposing Variant 3

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=dc51f11f441bc7d0>

Also includes Steve Fink proposing Variant 1

=item Dan Sugalski proposing Variant 3

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=da3012ceb99bab3c>

=item Peter Gibbs implementing Variant 4 and getting shot down

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=d2cd475367fc81aa>

=item General discussion kicked off by this document

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=66fe6f12e11a5f8d>

This thread also includes Benjamin Goldberg Variant 6

=item Dan thinks the stackwalk is unavoidable

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=f7e270609ef93161>

=item Infant mortality pain

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=ad045a1baeba0c9a>

This is a good thread for illustrating the pain that infant mortality causes --
in the context of Parrot, I mean.

=item Numbers!

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=d7cd4ca31dcb4414>

Gives some benchmark numbers for different approaches.

=item Generational stuff

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=808f38c656a49806>

Early discussion that has some stuff I didn't go over here. Mostly involves
generational schemes.

=item Problems with stack-walking

L<http://groups.google.com/groups?th=f9fc9c6d28eae2b5>

This thread also includes Juergen Boemmels Variant 3 of Solution 3

=back

=head1 CHANGES

2002-Dec-30: Initial Version by Steve Fink 2003-Aug-04: Some extra variants
added by Juergen Boemmels

