Process for distributed garbage collection

In a distributed computer system having a plurality of concurrently active processes that have instantiated a plurality of objects in a memory associated with the distributed computer system, a method of operating the distributed computer system comprising the steps of:

• selecting a suspect object from the plurality of objects for testing to determine whether said suspect object is garbage;
• identifying an inverse reference graph for said suspect object wherein each object of a subset of objects of the plurality of objects referentially coupled to said suspect object are represented as nodes on said inverse reference graph and wherein each edge between a pair of nodes defines a referential relationship between a pair of objects of said subset of the plurality of objects;
• testing each branch of said inverse graph coupled from a suspect node associated with said suspect object to a referring node associated with a referring object to determine whether any branch of said inverse reference graph is relevant to establish whether said suspect object is garbage;
• and
• identifying said suspect node as garbage when no branch is relevant to establish whether said suspect node is garbage.