JVM Options to Be Checked for GC Tuning

Posted in: JVM

Classification	Option	Description
Heap area size	-Xms	Heap area size when starting JVM
	-Xmx	Maximum heap area size
New area size	-XX:NewRatio	Ratio of New area and Old area
	-XX:NewSize	New area size
	-XX:SurvivorRatio	Ratio of Eden area and Survivor area

JVM performance optimization: Garbage collection

Posted in: JVM

Garbage collection (GC) is the process that aims to free up occupied memory that is no longer referenced by any reachable Java object, and is an essential part of the Java virtual machine's (JVM's) dynamic memory management system. In a typical garbage collection cycle all objects that are still referenced, and thus reachable, are kept. The space occupied by previously referenced objects is freed and reclaimed to enable new object allocation.
In order to understand garbage collection and the various GC approaches and algorithms, you must first know a few things about the Java platform's memory model.

Garbage collection and the Java platform memory model

When you specify the startup option -Xmx on the command line of your Java application (for instance: java -Xmx:2g MyApp) memory is assigned to a Java process. This memory is referred to as the Java heap (or just heap). This is the dedicated memory address space where all objects created by your Java program (or sometimes the JVM) will be allocated. As your Java program keeps running and allocating new objects, the Java heap (meaning that address space) will fill up. 

Eventually, the Java heap will be full, which means that an allocating thread is unable to find a large-enough consecutive section of free memory for the object it wants to allocate. At that point, the JVM determines that a garbage collection needs to happen and it notifies the garbage collector. A garbage collection can also be triggered when a Java program calls System.gc(). Using System.gc() does not guarantee a garbage collection. Before any garbage collection can start, a GC mechanism will first determine whether it is safe to start it. It is safe to start a garbage collection when all of the application's active threads are at a safe point to allow for it, e.g. simply explained it would be bad to start garbage collecting in the middle of an ongoing object allocation, or in the middle of executing a sequence of optimized CPU instructions (see my previous article on compilers), as you might lose context and thereby mess up end results. 

A garbage collector should never reclaim an actively referenced object; to do so would break the Java virtual machine specification. A garbage collector is also not required to immediately collect dead objects. Dead objects are eventually collected during subsequent garbage collection cycles. While there are many ways to implement garbage collection, these two assumptions are true for all varieties. The real challenge of garbage collection is to identify everything that is live (still referenced) and reclaim any unreferenced memory, but do so without impacting running applications any more than necessary. 

Source: JavaWorld.com 

Importance of JVM

Posted in: JVM

Java is independent only for one reason:

• Only depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM),
• code is compiled to bytecode, which is interpreted by the resident JVM,
• JIT (just in time) compilers attempt to increase speed.

Java Virtual Machine (JVM)