We have an optimization for this specific pattern, but it's really just
a hack. With the addition of unsafe.Add in Go 1.17 we can directly
specify the intent instead and eventually remove this special case.
The code is also easier to read.
This implements the block-based GC as a partially precise GC. This means
that for most heap allocations it is known which words contain a pointer
and which don't. This should in theory make the GC faster (because it
can skip non-pointer object) and have fewer false positives in a GC
cycle. It does however use a bit more RAM to store the layout of each
object.
Right now this GC seems to be slower than the conservative GC, but
should be less likely to run out of memory as a result of false
positives.
Most of the code of the conservative GC can be reused for the precise
GC. So before adding precise GC support, this commit just moves code
around to make the next commit cleaner. It is a non-functional change.
Ayke van Laethem
Anuraag Agrawal