Exploration of Memory Hierarchy Configurations for Efficient Garbage Collection on High-Performance Embedded Systems

Modern embedded devices (e.g., PDAs, mobile phones) are now incorporating Java as a very popular implementation language in their designs. These new embedded systems include multiple applications that are dynamically launched by the user, which can produce very energy-hungry systems if the interactions between the applications and the Garbage Collectors (GCs) are not properly understood. In this paper the authors present a complete exploration, from an energy viewpoint, of the different possibilities of memory hierarchies for high-performance embedded systems when used by state-of-the-art GCs.