Don't immediately promote children of old objects

[Feature #19678]

References from an old object to a write barrier protected young object
will not immediately promote the young object. Instead, the young object
will age just like any other object, meaning that it has to survive
three collections before being promoted to the old generation.
References from an old object to a write barrier unprotected object will
place the parent object in the remember set for marking during minor
collections. This allows the child object to be reclaimed in minor
collections at the cost of increased time for minor collections.

On one of [Shopify's highest traffic Ruby apps, Storefront
Renderer](https://shopify.engineering/how-shopify-reduced-storefront-response-times-rewrite),
we saw significant improvements after deploying this feature in
production. We compare the GC time and response time of web workers that
have the original behaviour (non-experimental group) and this new
behaviour (experimental group). We see that with this feature we spend
significantly less time in the GC, 0.81x on average, 0.88x on p99, and
0.45x on p99.9.

This translates to improvements in average response time (0.96x) and p99
response time (0.92x).

Author: peterzhu2118

gc.c

@@ -967,6 +967,8 @@ struct heap_page {
     bits_t uncollectible_bits[HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_LIMIT];
     bits_t marking_bits[HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_LIMIT];
 
+    bits_t remembered_bits[HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_LIMIT];
+
     /* If set, the object is not movable */
     bits_t pinned_bits[HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_LIMIT];
 };
@@ -1548,7 +1550,8 @@ check_rvalue_consistency_force(const VALUE obj, int terminate)
             const int wb_unprotected_bit = RVALUE_WB_UNPROTECTED_BITMAP(obj) != 0;
             const int uncollectible_bit = RVALUE_UNCOLLECTIBLE_BITMAP(obj) != 0;
             const int mark_bit = RVALUE_MARK_BITMAP(obj) != 0;
-            const int marking_bit = RVALUE_MARKING_BITMAP(obj) != 0, remembered_bit = marking_bit;
+            const int marking_bit = RVALUE_MARKING_BITMAP(obj) != 0;
+            const int remembered_bit = MARKED_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_PAGE(obj)->remembered_bits, obj) != 0;
             const int age = RVALUE_FLAGS_AGE(RBASIC(obj)->flags);
 
             if (GET_HEAP_PAGE(obj)->flags.in_tomb) {
@@ -1682,7 +1685,7 @@ static inline int
 RVALUE_REMEMBERED(VALUE obj)
 {
     check_rvalue_consistency(obj);
-    return RVALUE_MARKING_BITMAP(obj) != 0;
+    return MARKED_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_PAGE(obj)->remembered_bits, obj) != 0;
 }
 
 static inline int
@@ -1763,31 +1766,6 @@ RVALUE_AGE_INC(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
     check_rvalue_consistency(obj);
 }
 
-/* set age to RVALUE_OLD_AGE */
-static inline void
-RVALUE_AGE_SET_OLD(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
-{
-    check_rvalue_consistency(obj);
-    GC_ASSERT(!RVALUE_OLD_P(obj));
-
-    RBASIC(obj)->flags = RVALUE_FLAGS_AGE_SET(RBASIC(obj)->flags, RVALUE_OLD_AGE);
-    RVALUE_OLD_UNCOLLECTIBLE_SET(objspace, obj);
-
-    check_rvalue_consistency(obj);
-}
-
-/* set age to RVALUE_OLD_AGE - 1 */
-static inline void
-RVALUE_AGE_SET_CANDIDATE(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
-{
-    check_rvalue_consistency(obj);
-    GC_ASSERT(!RVALUE_OLD_P(obj));
-
-    RBASIC(obj)->flags = RVALUE_FLAGS_AGE_SET(RBASIC(obj)->flags, RVALUE_OLD_AGE - 1);
-
-    check_rvalue_consistency(obj);
-}
-
 static inline void
 RVALUE_DEMOTE_RAW(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
 {
@@ -1802,7 +1780,7 @@ RVALUE_DEMOTE(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
     GC_ASSERT(RVALUE_OLD_P(obj));
 
     if (!is_incremental_marking(objspace) && RVALUE_REMEMBERED(obj)) {
-        CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_MARKING_BITS(obj), obj);
+        CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_PAGE(obj)->remembered_bits, obj);
     }
 
     RVALUE_DEMOTE_RAW(objspace, obj);
@@ -6976,31 +6954,8 @@ rgengc_check_relation(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
     const VALUE old_parent = objspace->rgengc.parent_object;
 
     if (old_parent) { /* parent object is old */
-        if (RVALUE_WB_UNPROTECTED(obj)) {
-            if (gc_remember_unprotected(objspace, obj)) {
-                gc_report(2, objspace, "relation: (O->S) %s -> %s\n", obj_info(old_parent), obj_info(obj));
-            }
-        }
-        else {
-            if (!RVALUE_OLD_P(obj)) {
-                if (RVALUE_MARKED(obj)) {
-                    /* An object pointed from an OLD object should be OLD. */
-                    gc_report(2, objspace, "relation: (O->unmarked Y) %s -> %s\n", obj_info(old_parent), obj_info(obj));
-                    RVALUE_AGE_SET_OLD(objspace, obj);
-                    if (is_incremental_marking(objspace)) {
-                        if (!RVALUE_MARKING(obj)) {
-                            gc_grey(objspace, obj);
-                        }
-                    }
-                    else {
-                        rgengc_remember(objspace, obj);
-                    }
-                }
-                else {
-                    gc_report(2, objspace, "relation: (O->Y) %s -> %s\n", obj_info(old_parent), obj_info(obj));
-                    RVALUE_AGE_SET_CANDIDATE(objspace, obj);
-                }
-            }
+        if (RVALUE_WB_UNPROTECTED(obj) || !RVALUE_OLD_P(obj)) {
+            rgengc_remember(objspace, old_parent);
         }
     }
 
@@ -8791,9 +8746,7 @@ static int
 rgengc_remembersetbits_set(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE obj)
 {
     struct heap_page *page = GET_HEAP_PAGE(obj);
-    bits_t *bits = &page->marking_bits[0];
-
-    GC_ASSERT(!is_incremental_marking(objspace));
+    bits_t *bits = &page->remembered_bits[0];
 
     if (MARKED_IN_BITMAP(bits, obj)) {
         return FALSE;
@@ -8886,7 +8839,7 @@ rgengc_rememberset_mark(rb_objspace_t *objspace, rb_heap_t *heap)
         if (page->flags.has_remembered_objects | page->flags.has_uncollectible_shady_objects) {
             uintptr_t p = page->start;
             bits_t bitset, bits[HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_LIMIT];
-            bits_t *marking_bits = page->marking_bits;
+            bits_t *remembered_bits = page->remembered_bits;
             bits_t *uncollectible_bits = page->uncollectible_bits;
             bits_t *wb_unprotected_bits = page->wb_unprotected_bits;
 #if PROFILE_REMEMBERSET_MARK
@@ -8895,8 +8848,8 @@ rgengc_rememberset_mark(rb_objspace_t *objspace, rb_heap_t *heap)
             else if (page->flags.has_uncollectible_shady_objects) has_shady++;
 #endif
             for (j=0; j<HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_LIMIT; j++) {
-                bits[j] = marking_bits[j] | (uncollectible_bits[j] & wb_unprotected_bits[j]);
-                marking_bits[j] = 0;
+                bits[j] = remembered_bits[j] | (uncollectible_bits[j] & wb_unprotected_bits[j]);
+                remembered_bits[j] = 0;
             }
             page->flags.has_remembered_objects = FALSE;
 
@@ -8933,6 +8886,7 @@ rgengc_mark_and_rememberset_clear(rb_objspace_t *objspace, rb_heap_t *heap)
         memset(&page->mark_bits[0],       0, HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_SIZE);
         memset(&page->uncollectible_bits[0], 0, HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_SIZE);
         memset(&page->marking_bits[0],    0, HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_SIZE);
+        memset(&page->remembered_bits[0], 0, HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_SIZE);
         memset(&page->pinned_bits[0],     0, HEAP_PAGE_BITMAP_SIZE);
         page->flags.has_uncollectible_shady_objects = FALSE;
         page->flags.has_remembered_objects = FALSE;
@@ -9006,18 +8960,7 @@ gc_writebarrier_incremental(VALUE a, VALUE b, rb_objspace_t *objspace)
             }
         }
         else if (RVALUE_OLD_P(a) && !RVALUE_OLD_P(b)) {
-            if (!RVALUE_WB_UNPROTECTED(b)) {
-                gc_report(1, objspace, "gc_writebarrier_incremental: [GN] %p -> %s\n", (void *)a, obj_info(b));
-                RVALUE_AGE_SET_OLD(objspace, b);
-
-                if (RVALUE_BLACK_P(b)) {
-                    gc_grey(objspace, b);
-                }
-            }
-            else {
-                gc_report(1, objspace, "gc_writebarrier_incremental: [LL] %p -> %s\n", (void *)a, obj_info(b));
-                gc_remember_unprotected(objspace, b);
-            }
+            rgengc_remember(objspace, a);
         }
 
         if (UNLIKELY(objspace->flags.during_compacting)) {
@@ -9947,7 +9890,6 @@ gc_move(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE scan, VALUE free, size_t src_slot_size, s
     int marked;
     int wb_unprotected;
     int uncollectible;
-    int marking;
     RVALUE *dest = (RVALUE *)free;
     RVALUE *src = (RVALUE *)scan;
 
@@ -9956,17 +9898,19 @@ gc_move(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE scan, VALUE free, size_t src_slot_size, s
     GC_ASSERT(BUILTIN_TYPE(scan) != T_NONE);
     GC_ASSERT(!MARKED_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_MARK_BITS(free), free));
 
+    GC_ASSERT(!RVALUE_MARKING((VALUE)src));
+
     /* Save off bits for current object. */
     marked = rb_objspace_marked_object_p((VALUE)src);
     wb_unprotected = RVALUE_WB_UNPROTECTED((VALUE)src);
     uncollectible = RVALUE_UNCOLLECTIBLE((VALUE)src);
-    marking = RVALUE_MARKING((VALUE)src);
+    bool remembered = RVALUE_REMEMBERED((VALUE)src);
 
     /* Clear bits for eventual T_MOVED */
     CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_MARK_BITS((VALUE)src), (VALUE)src);
     CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_WB_UNPROTECTED_BITS((VALUE)src), (VALUE)src);
     CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_UNCOLLECTIBLE_BITS((VALUE)src), (VALUE)src);
-    CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_MARKING_BITS((VALUE)src), (VALUE)src);
+    CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_PAGE((VALUE)src)->remembered_bits, (VALUE)src);
 
     if (FL_TEST((VALUE)src, FL_EXIVAR)) {
         /* Resizing the st table could cause a malloc */
@@ -10005,11 +9949,11 @@ gc_move(rb_objspace_t *objspace, VALUE scan, VALUE free, size_t src_slot_size, s
     memset(src, 0, src_slot_size);
 
     /* Set bits for object in new location */
-    if (marking) {
-        MARK_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_MARKING_BITS((VALUE)dest), (VALUE)dest);
+    if (remembered) {
+        MARK_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_PAGE(dest)->remembered_bits, (VALUE)dest);
     }
     else {
-        CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_MARKING_BITS((VALUE)dest), (VALUE)dest);
+        CLEAR_IN_BITMAP(GET_HEAP_PAGE(dest)->remembered_bits, (VALUE)dest);
     }
 
     if (marked) {
@@ -10781,7 +10725,7 @@ gc_ref_update(void *vstart, void *vend, size_t stride, rb_objspace_t * objspace,
             if (RVALUE_WB_UNPROTECTED(v)) {
                 page->flags.has_uncollectible_shady_objects = TRUE;
             }
-            if (RVALUE_PAGE_MARKING(page, v)) {
+            if (RVALUE_REMEMBERED(v)) {
                 page->flags.has_remembered_objects = TRUE;
             }
             if (page->flags.before_sweep) {

test/ruby/test_gc.rb

@@ -755,4 +755,30 @@ def test_ast_node_buffer
     Module.new.class_eval( (["# shareable_constant_value: literal"] +
                             (0..100000).map {|i| "M#{ i } = {}" }).join("\n"))
   end
+
+  def test_old_to_young_reference
+    original_gc_disabled = GC.disable
+
+    require "objspace"
+
+    old_obj = Object.new
+    4.times { GC.start }
+
+    assert_include ObjectSpace.dump(old_obj), '"old":true'
+
+    young_obj = Object.new
+    old_obj.instance_variable_set(:@test, young_obj)
+
+    # Not immediately promoted to old generation
+    3.times do
+      assert_not_include ObjectSpace.dump(young_obj), '"old":true'
+      GC.start
+    end
+
+    # Takes 4 GC to promote to old generation
+    GC.start
+    assert_include ObjectSpace.dump(young_obj), '"old":true'
+  ensure
+    GC.enable if !original_gc_disabled
+  end
 end