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Reference Counting Excels For Large Single-Owner Buffers
- Reference counting shines for single-reference, pointer-free large objects like big I/O buffers because counts go from 0→1→0 with no pointer traversal.
- Tracing collectors can lag and cycle through many buffers before reclaiming them, causing higher peak memory usage.
Generational Hypothesis Makes Minor Collections Cheap
- The generational hypothesis holds across languages: most newly allocated objects die quickly, so a tiny nursery with fast bump allocation eliminates many heap allocations.
- Minor collections scan the small region and promote only survivors, avoiding expensive major-heap allocation for temporaries.
Use Local Stack Allocation To Cut GC Pressure
- Add safe local (stack) allocation for short-lived temporaries to avoid minor-heap churn and improve cache reuse.
- Stack allocations cost a register subtraction and reuse the same cache lines, reducing promotions and GC pressure compared to minor allocations.