> Pointer masking: you can fit a lot in the unused higher bits of an address. Some GCs use them to annotate memory (refered-to/visited/unvisited/etc.), but you have to mask them. A hardware assisted mask could help a lot.

If you're building hardware masking, it should be viable for low bits too. If you define all your objects to be n-byte aligned, it frees up low bits for things too, and might not be an imposition, things like to be aligned.