Dynamic adaptive tenuring of objects

A storage management facility for a computational system, the storage management facility comprising:

• an object sampler operable to sample lifetimes of at least a subset of objects instantiated in the computational system during execution of a program;
• and
• a storage allocation facility operable during the execution of the program to allocate new objects corresponding to respective of the sampled objects based at least in part on the sampled object lifetimes.

A computer program product encoded in at least one computer readable medium, the computer program product comprising:

• at least one functional sequence for maintaining per-category object lifetime statistics based on a sampled subset of objects using weak references and associated allocation time information;
• and
• at least one functional sequence for tenuring objects in accordance with those of the object lifetime statistics corresponding thereto.

A computer program product as recited in 41,

• wherein the tenuring sequence is instantiated for a particular category when corresponding object lifetime statistics exceed a metric.

A computer program product as recited in 42,

• wherein the tenuring sequence replaces a category-specific allocator.

A computer program product as recited in 42,

• wherein the tenuring sequence is replaced by a non-tenuring, category-specific allocator when corresponding object lifetime statistics fall below a second metric.

A computer program product as recited in 41,

• wherein the at least one computer readable medium is selected from the set of a disk, tape or other magnetic, optical, or electronic storage medium and a network, wireline, wireless or other communications medium.

An apparatus comprising:

• means for sampling instances of software objects to maintain lifetime predictions for categories thereof;
• and
• means for altering object category-specific storage management policies at run-time in response to the lifetime predictions.