Memory leak Masking Using Dual Heap Organization

Author

Mohammad K. Alweh, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2010

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Botros, Nazeih

Second Advisor

Ramaprasad, Harini

Abstract

The dual heap virtual implementation provided a new base for memory organization such that the heap storage can be virtually enlarged to include the extremely large disk space. Two simulation models were used to investigate aging in physical space as well as the dual heap implementation. The simulators generated results which measured the ability of each method to detect leaks generate false positives and false negatives. In comparison, the dual heap implementation showed a relatively better performance than the aging algorithm. The dual heap implementation is shown to produce less false positives and less false negatives. It has better capability of detecting memory leaks. Furthermore, dual heap implementation extends the space provide to the main heap such that programs with greedy memory consumption can also benefit from this implementation. The dual heap virtual model of the heap organization is a promising architecture, which at once masks the memory leak problem and extends the heap storage for greedy programs. The introduction and advancement of 64-bit address machine would not reduce the value of the dual virtual heap implementation, for the simple reasons that a large number of legacy programs will continue to run in a 32-bit environment, and for the fact that greedy programs and leaks will drain the heap storage of 64-bit machines as much as they did for the 32-bit machines.