37. The generic scanner¶
37.1. Summaries¶
37.1.1. Scanned summary¶
.summary.subset: The summary of reference seens by scan
(ss.unfixedSummary) is a subset of the summary previously computed
(SegSummary()).
There are two reasons that it is not an equality relation:
If the segment has had objects forwarded onto it then its summary will get unioned with the summary of the segment that the object was forwarded from. This may increase the summary. The forwarded object of course may have a smaller summary (if such a thing were to be computed) and so subsequent scanning of the segment may reduce the summary. (The forwarding process may erroneously introduce zones into the destination’s summary).
A write barrier hit will set the summary to
RefSetUNIV.
The reason that ss.unfixedSummary is always a subset of the
previous summary is due to an “optimization” which has not been made
in TraceFix. See design.mps.trace.fix.fixed.all.
37.1.2. Partial scans¶
.clever-summary: With enough cleverness, it’s possible to have partial scans of condemned segments contribute to the segment summary.
Note
We had a system which nearly worked – see MMsrc(MMdevel_poolams at 1997/08/14 13:02:55 BST), but it did not handle the situation in which a segment was not under the write barrier when it was condemned.
.clever-summary.acc: Each time we partially scan a segment, we
accumulate the post-scan summary of the scanned objects into a field
in the group, called summarySoFar. The post-scan summary is
(summary white) ∪ fixed.
.clever-summary.acc.condemn: The cumulative summary is only
meaningful while the segment is condemned. Otherwise it is set to
RefSetEMPTY (a value which we can check).
.clever-summary.acc.reclaim: Then when we reclaim the segment, we set the segment summary to the cumulative summary, as it is a post-scan summary of all the scanned objects.
.clever-summary.acc.other-trace: If the segment is scanned by another trace while it is condemned, the cumulative summary must be set to the post-scan summary of this scan (otherwise it becomes out-of-date).
.clever-summary.scan: The scan summary is expected to be a summary of all scanned references in the segment. We don’t know this accurately until we’ve scanned everything in the segment. So we add in the segment summary each time.
.clever-summary.scan.fix: TraceScan also expects the scan state fixed summary to include the post-scan summary of all references which were white. Since we don’t scan all white references, we need to add in an approximation to the summary of all white references which we didn’t scan. This is the intersection of the segment summary and the white summary.
.clever-summary.wb: If the cumulative summary is smaller than the mutator’s summary, a write-barrier is needed to prevent the mutator from invalidating it. This means that sometimes we’d have to put the segment under the write-barrier at condemn, which might not be very efficient
Note
This is not an operation currently available to pool class implementations Pekka P. Pirinen, 1998-02-26.
.clever-summary.method.wb: We need a new pool class method, called when the write barrier is hit (or possibly any barrier hit). The generic method will do the usual TraceAccess work, the trivial method will do nothing.
.clever-summary.acc.wb: When the write barrier is hit, we need to
correct the cumulative summary to the mutator summary. This is
approximated by setting the summary to RefSetUNIV.
