Integrating Hybrid Garbage Collection with Dual Priority Scheduling

In this report, we propose an approach to integrate a hybrid garbage collection algorithm into the current response time analysis framework for real-time systems. In our approach, the collection algorithm is a combination of reference counting and mark-and-sweep techniques so we can keep the advantages of reference counting while eliminating cyclic garbage by invoking mark-and-sweep occasionally. Instead of collecting garbage incrementally, we put most GC work into a periodic real-time thread, namely the GC thread, which is scheduled according to the dual priority scheduling method. By performing static analysis, we can get the GC thread's parameters such as period, deadline, priority and worst case execution time. With these parameters, we can perform schedulability analysis (response time analysis) for all the real-time threads including the GC thread.