Memory Management with MMTk - Lessons Learned from Replacing Ruby's Garbage Collector

Explore the challenges and opportunities in optimizing garbage collection algorithms for programming languages in this 40-minute conference talk from linux.conf.au. Delve into the Memory Management Toolkit (MMTk), an open-source runtime-agnostic garbage collection framework developed by ANU researchers. Learn how MMTk simplifies the implementation of high-performance garbage collection algorithms for both new and existing programming languages. Discover the lessons learned from integrating MMTk into MRI, Ruby's main interpreter, and gain insights into improving performance for large-scale, low-latency, and high-throughput systems. Understand the trade-offs between performance and simplicity in garbage collector design, and how MMTk aims to bridge this gap with its unified bidirectional API and extensive library of algorithms.