Memory Management and Garbage Collection

In the ATOAM, there are five data areas: program area, heap, control stack, trail stack, and table area. The program area contains, besides programs, a symbol table that stores information about the atoms, functions and predicate symbols in the programs. The heap stores terms created during execution. The control stack stores activation frames associated with predicate calls. The trail stack stores updates of those words that must be unbound upon backtracking. The tail area is used to store tabled subgoals and their answers.