Stack Allocation-based Memory Performance Improvement Technique on Android 2.3 Dalvik Virtual Machine

In this paper, we propose a stack allocation technique of Android Java objects in order to reduce the number of garbage collection which is one of major reason on Android performance degradation when running applications. The proposed technique is to allocate Java objects into stack rather than heap memory. To do so, stacked objects could escape the garbage collection process. We experiment the proposed technique in the latest Android 2.3 version. For the simulation, we take advantage of the well known Java benchmark, Caffeinemark, and our own. The result shows the performance degradation of Dalvik Virtual Machine execution time caused by the stack allocation of Java objects is very slight and the proposed method considerably reduces the frequency of garbage collection. This will increase application performance and give better user interfaces to Android phone users.