An increasing number of processor architectures support scratch-pad memory - software managed on-chip memory. Scratch-pad memory provides low latency data storage, like on-chip caches, but under explicit software control. The simple design and predictable nature of scratchpad memories has seen them incorporated into a number of embedded and real-time system processors. They are also employed by multi-core architectures to isolate processor core local data and act as low latency inter-core shared memory.

The Java RMI collector is arguably the most widely used distributed garbage collector. Its distributed reference listing algorithm was introduced by Birrell et al. in the context of Network Objects, where the description was informal and heavily biased toward implementation. In this article, we formalize this algorithm in an implementation-independent manner, which allows us to clarify weaknesses of the initial presentation. In particular, we discover cases critical to the correctness of the algorithm that were not accounted for by Birrell. We use our formalization to derive an invariant-based proof of correctness of the algorithm that avoids notoriously difficult temporal reasoning. Furthermore, we offer a novel graphical representation of the state transition diagram, which we use to provide intuitive explanations of the algorithm and to investigate its tolerance to faults in a systematic manner. Finally, we examine how the algorithm may be optimized, either by placing constraints on message channels or by tightening the coupling between the application program and distributed garbage collector.

A new variant algorithm for distributed acyclic garbage detection is presented for use in hybrid garbage collectors. The existing fault-tolerance of Piquer's Indirect Reference Counting (IRC) is qualitatively improved by this new approach. The key insight that underpins this work is the observation that the parent of a node in the IRC diffusion tree need not remain constant. The new variant exploits standard mechanisms for implementing diffusion trees and remote references, using four simple low-cost techniques to dynamically restructure the trees to reduce their depth. This variant reduces third-party dependencies, which make standard IRC vulnerable to process failure, while retaining tolerance of message reordering and without incurring substantial overheads. The paper carefully motivates the algorithm, presents the full technical basis for its development, provides a clear explanation of implementation details and includes an initial discussion of performance issues.

This paper describes a novel approach to managing the evolution of distributed, persistent systems at run-time. This is achieved by partitioning a system into disjoint zones, each of which can be evolved without affecting code in any other. Contracts are defined between zones, making type-level interdependencies and inter-zone communication explicit. Programmer supplied code is added to the running system, at the boundary between zones, to constrain the scope of changes. A change methodology is presented which the software engineer uses to help describe and manage the evolution of the system. Knowledge of the application semantics is essential when evolving a system and our approach allows the engineer to concentrate on these semantic aspects of change. Our Java-based demonstration platform and methodology reduce or remove some of the burdensome tasks the software engineer is normally expected to perform when changing a system, making evolution more tractable.

We propose efficient, programming language-independent, location-transparent references as a substitute for pointers in distributed applications.These references provide the semantics of normal pointers for both local and distributed, transient and persistent objects.They may be passed in messages between and within nodes using a low-overhead presentation-layer protocol.of thousands of nodes connected using both local and wide-area networks.