The practice of coloring pointers is a core DNA element of ZGC. There are different ways of coloring a pointer and picking an appropriate one is of crucial importance for the algorithm. As the complexity of our ZGC art increases, its color palette evolves with it, allowing it to describe more nuanced shades. This presentation goes into a little bit more detail how the ZGC choice of paint has evolved from non-generational to generational ZGC, but also how it has evolved further to prepare for the next step in the evolution of ZGC: thread-local GC.

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