Abstract: A real-time, concurrent garbage collection system and method uses the virtual-memory page protection mechanisms of a standard computer system to collect used storage space in a heap. The heap is divided into old-space and new-space portions, each of which is further divided into a multiplicity of pages. At least one mutator thread modifies and adds objects to new-space. Two garbage collection process threads are used: a fault processing thread, and a concurrent scanning thread, both of which help to collect the accessible objects in old-space. The garbage collector initially copies only the root objects, or a portion of the root objects, to new-space. In addition, all pages of new-space which contain copies of old-space objects are initially marked as being protected. Whenever the mutator tries to access an object in a protected page, a page-access trap is generated.