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Watch a 17-minute conference presentation from OOPSLA 2025 that introduces work packets, a revolutionary new abstraction for garbage collection implementation that addresses the longstanding tension between efficiency and maintainability in GC software engineering. Learn how researchers Wenyu Zhao, Stephen M. Blackburn, and Kathryn S. McKinley from Australian National University and Google have developed a unified approach that simplifies all GC tasks into work packets consisting of work items, processing kernels, and scheduling constraints. Discover how this design moves away from traditional monolithic, phase-based synchronization approaches by recognizing that GC execution is dominated by small, heavily-executed kernels orchestrating vast numbers of performance-critical work items. Explore the implementation of eight different collectors using 23 common work packet types within the MMTk GC framework, and examine how the novel two-tier work-stealing algorithm optimizes parallelism at fine granularity. See performance comparisons demonstrating that the LXR collector with work packets outperforms the highly-tuned OpenJDK 24 G1 garbage collector while simultaneously simplifying GC implementation and making systems easier to optimize and verify. Gain insights into how work packets enable both software engineering agility and high performance, supporting rapid development and innovation in garbage collection research and implementation.
