Architecture

The architecture of the memory management system is partitioned into a few classes, each responsible for providing distinct services:

• GCHeapManager  -- The heap manager. The heap manager manages the heap table, performs page level allocation and deallocation, and provides miscellaneous services like blacklisting. It also manages the object bitmaps.
• GC  -- The base class for all garbage collectors. This base class describes the protocol used by all the collector classes¹⁶
• CGC  -- The base class for conservative collectors. This class is inherited from class GC  and implements some methods for locating the stack, heap, and static data areas.
• BGC  -- Bartlett-style mostly copying collector. This class is inherited from class CGC  and implements the Bartlett mostly copying algorithm.
• MarkSweepGC  -- Mark/sweep style conservative collector. This class is inherited from class CGC  and implements a mark/sweep collection algorithm.
• WeakPointerManager  -- The weakpointer manager. This class manages the weak pointer table and provides a few weak pointer scavenging services for the collectors.