Very cool! Here is the paper: https://zenodo.org/record/7816398. It uses the well known Immix heap layout/algorithm. https://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~steveb/pubs/papers/immix-pldi...
The old gencgc was pretty cool for the single core era, and it sounds like it still holds up well. If I recall correctly, it was based on the Bartlett Mostly Copying paper, which is an elegant and practical GC design. https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-TN-12.pdf. I miss these old papers that described this stuff in a way you didn’t have to be a math major to understand. I think the first version of that paper had the C++ code as an appendix: https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-88-2.pdf.
Clarity in your technical communications matters. The Immix papers are similarly well written and clear. I don’t think it’s a surprise that both GC designs have also been independently implemented over and over. The Chaitin-Briggs register allocator is another example where I’d attribute at least some of the success in widespread industrial implementation to Briggs’ excellent and approachable PhD thesis describing the algorithm: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/380C/lecs/briggs-th...
Other great achievements from last year [0]:
- SBCL is callable as a shared library (see sbcl-librarian)
- sb-simd
- prebuilt binaries for Android (termux, unofficial)
- better image compression using zstd
- I'll add https://github.com/sionescu/sbcl-goodies, binaries with "goodies" inside (OpenSSL, libfixposix)
yay!
[0]: https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/these-years-in-common-li...
bonus from 2021: true static binaries are coming https://www.timmons.dev/posts/static-executables-with-sbcl-v...
Nice, good to see activity in SBCL dev.
Does anyone know how difficult implementing a Real-Time GC would be for SBCL or ECL. I know of that paper by Rodney Brooks (L -- A Common Lisp for Embedded Systems)
A pattern I've noticed is that in languages with garbage collection, the garbage collection aspect is never finished. It is always a pain point and people are constantly waiting for promised future features and refinements.
What would having a parallel GC mean in the practical sense?
That there is no pauses happening during the runtime?
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Recent and related (but we merged the comments hither):
Steel Bank Common Lisp 2.3.8 released: “a mark-region parallel GC is available” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37295611