For a good introduction and overview to garbage collection, see Jones99.

MLton's garbage collector uses copying, mark-compact, and generational collection, automatically switching between them at run time based on the amount of live data relative to the amount of RAM. The runtime system tries to keep the heap within RAM if at all possible.

MLton's copying collector is a simple, two-space, breadth-first, Cheney-style collector. The design for the generational and mark-compact GC is based on Sansom91.

Design notes

• http://mlton.org/pipermail/mlton/2002-May/012420.html
  object layout and header word design

Also see

• Regions