Annon Inglorion

How much code does it take to implement a garbage collector? It depends, of course, on the requirements. The Itty-Bitty Garbage Collector (IBGC) is a garbage collector designed for systems where available memory is limited (perhaps a few tens of kilobytes) and we want to limit both the collector's memory overhead and its code size. The current proof-of-concept implementation takes about 120 lines of C code (per SLOCCount), supports objects of multiple sizes, and manages allocated memory cells using pre-allocated tags, of which it uses 3 bits per cell.

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