Method and system for minor garbage collection

A system comprising:

• a young generation for storing young objects;
• a shared older generation for storing promoted objects;
• and
• a garbage collector configured to perform minor garbage collection by:
• marking a plurality of cards as clean, wherein the plurality of cards designates ranges of memory locations in the shared older generation;
• marking a card selected from the plurality of cards as dirty to obtain a dirty card when a reference field of an object is modified,
• wherein the object is allocated in a promotion area selected from a plurality of promotion areas,
• wherein the promotion area is used to promote objects to the shared older generation only for a single task, and
• wherein a memory location of the reference field is designated by the card;
• examining the plurality of promotion areas and the plurality of cards to identify a region of the dirty card overlapping the promotion area, wherein promotion areas associated with other tasks are ignored;
• scanning the region of the dirty card overlapping the promotion area to identify roots of live young objects associated with the single task;
• and
• freeing a young object associated with the single task not identified as live during scanning.

A computer readable medium comprising executable instructions for minor garbage collection by:

• marking a plurality of cards as clean, wherein the plurality of cards designates ranges of memory locations in a shared older generation;
• marking a card selected from the plurality of cards as dirty to obtain a dirty card when a reference field of an object is modified,
• wherein the object is allocated in a promotion area selected from a plurality of promotion areas,
• wherein the promotion area is used to promote objects to the shared older generation only for a single task, and
• wherein a memory location of the reference field is designated by the card;
• examining the plurality of promotion areas and the plurality of cards to identify a region of the dirty card-overlapping the promotion area, wherein promotion areas associated with other tasks are ignored;
• scanning the region of the dirty card overlapping the promotion area to identify roots of live young objects associated with the single task;
• and
• freeing a young object associated with the single task not identified as live during scanning.