[taejo]

Reference-counting schemes don't have the same performance headaches as GC's with an analysis step, they have different ones:

* their own form of pause (when the last reference to a large tree of object disappears) -- this can rule out RC for real-time systems, while there are real-time GCs (though rare)

* a non-local memory access per reference creation (whereas in other types of GC, the cost of allocation can be reduced to a single increment and compare of a value probably stored in a register)

* none of the locality advantages of copying/compacting collectors