GARBAGE COLLECTION SYSTEM FOR A SYMBOLIC DIGITAL PROCESSOR

A memory management process for garbage collection in a symbolic digital processor. An operating processor performs the symbolic digital processing while a memory management processor operates in the background to collect garbage, that is, to discard obsolete objects from memory. The memory management processor identifies all objects in old memory that are accessible from a root set of objects and copies the accessible objects to a copy space. In contrast to prior art systems, each accessible object in old space is not replaced by a pointer to copy space. Instead, a current copy of each of the accessible objects is created in copy space and upon completion of this task, the old space and copy space are exchanged or flipped almost instantaneously. As a consequence, the processing speed of the operating processor is unaffected by the garbage collection process thus allowing the operating processor to operate with real time processes.