GENERATION ISOLATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GARBAGE COLLECTION

Architectural support for generation isolation is provided through trapping of intergenerational pointer stores. Identification of pointer stores as intergenerational is performed by a store barrier responsive to an intergenerational pointer store trap matrix that is programmably encoded with store target object and store pointer data generation pairs to be trapped. The write barrier and intergenerational pointer store trap matrix provide a programmably-flexible definition of generation pairs to be trapped, affording a garbage collector implementer with support for a wide variety of generational garbage collection methods, including remembered set-based methods, card-marking type methods, write barrier based copying collector methods, etc., as well as combinations thereof and combinations including train algorithm type methods to managing mature portions of a generationally collected memory space. Pointer specific store instruction replacement allows implementations in accordance with this invention to provide an exact barrier to not only pointer stores, but to the specific intergenerational pointer stores of interest to a particular garbage collection method or combination of methods.