boehm-gc: revert all CACAO-specific modifications; this is now an exact copy of the...

[cacao.git] / src / mm / boehm-gc / doc / gcdescr.html

diff --git a/src/mm/boehm-gc/doc/gcdescr.html b/src/mm/boehm-gc/doc/gcdescr.html
index dc08470e401a690e9a1fb02f9160a813e2317794..29e946cc4bb6bbbea9fd438db211d97312fe9deb 100644 (file)
--- a/src/mm/boehm-gc/doc/gcdescr.html
+++ b/src/mm/boehm-gc/doc/gcdescr.html
@@ -112,8 +112,19 @@ is significantly complicated by black-listing issues
 <P>
 Small blocks are allocated in chunks of size <TT>HBLKSIZE</tt>.
 Each chunk is
-dedicated to only one object size and kind.  The allocator maintains
+dedicated to only one object size and kind.
+<P>
+The allocator maintains
 separate free lists for each size and kind of object.
+Associated with each kind is an array of free list pointers,
+with entry <TT>freelist[</tt><I>i</i><TT>]</tt> pointing to
+a free list of size <I>i</i> objects.
+In recent versions of the
+collector, index <TT>i</tt> is expressed in granules, which are the
+minimum allocatable unit, typically 8 or 16 bytes.
+The free lists themselves are
+linked through the first word in each object (see <TT>obj_link()</tt>
+macro).
 <P>
 Once a large block is split for use in smaller objects, it can only
 be used for objects of that size, unless the collector discovers a completely
@@ -131,7 +142,8 @@ the requested size, subject to alignment constraints.
 See <TT>GC_init_size_map</tt> for details.
 <P>
 The actual size rounding operation during small object allocation is
-implemented as a table lookup in <TT>GC_size_map</tt>.
+implemented as a table lookup in <TT>GC_size_map</tt> which maps
+a requested allocation size in bytes to a number of granules.
 <P>
 Both collector initialization and computation of allocated sizes are
 handled carefully so that they do not slow down the small object fast
@@ -438,7 +450,7 @@ bytes of allocation have taken place.
 After <TT>GC_full_freq</tt> minor collections a major collection
 is started.
 <P>
-All collections initially run interrupted until a predetermined
+All collections initially run uninterrupted until a predetermined
 amount of time (50 msecs by default) has expired.  If this allows
 the collection to complete entirely, we can avoid correcting
 for data structure modifications during the collection.  If it does
@@ -564,7 +576,8 @@ Depending onthe configuration, "gcj" objects may also be included.
 <P>
 Thread-local free list entries contain either a pointer to the first
 element of a free list, or they contain a counter of the number of
-allocation "granules" allocated so far.  Initially they contain the
+allocation granules, corresponding to objects of this size,
+allocated so far.  Initially they contain the
 value one, i.e. a small counter value.
 <P>
 Thread-local allocation allocates directly through the global