Java garbage collection has evolved significantly since its inception in 1959. The modern Hotspot JVM uses generational garbage collection with a young and old generation. It employs concurrent and parallel techniques like CMS to minimize pauses. OutOfMemoryErrors require increasing heap sizes or fixing leaks. Finalizers are generally avoided due to performance impacts. GC tuning must be tested under realistic loads rather than one-size-fits-all settings. Analysis tools help correlate GC logs with application behavior.

1. Java Garbage Collector:
Friend or Foe
Krasimir Semerdzhiev
Development Architect / SAP Labs Bulgaria

2. Agenda
1. Brief historical view
2. Myths and Urban legends
3. GC machinery
4. Try to stay out of trouble

3. History of Garbage Collection
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…
* Counting from [McCarthy 1959]
McCarthy (1959)
LISt Processor (LISP)
Reference counting (IBM)
Naive Mark/sweep GC
Semi-space collector
1959*
Knuth (1973/1978)
Copying collector
Mark/sweep GC
Mark/don’t sweep GC
1970 1990 2000 2011
Appel (1988), Baker (1992)
Generational GC
Train GC
Stop the world
Cheng-Blelloch (2001)
Concurrent
Parallel
Real-Time GC
2003
Bacon, Cheng, Rajan (2003)
Metronome GC
Garbage first GC (G1)
Ergonomics
20091995

4. Agenda
1. Brief historical view
2. Myths and Urban legends
3. GC machinery
4. Try to stay out of trouble
5. Tools for the masses

5. Myths
Java and C/C++ performance
Is C/C++ faster than Java?
The short answer: it depends.
/Cliff Click

6. Myths
My GC cleans up tons of memory – what’s going on.
String s = "c"?
= ref + 8 + (12 + 2) + 4 + 4 + 4 > 34 bytes.
/** The value is used for character storage. */
private final char value[];
/** The offset is the first index of the storage that is used. */
private final int offset;
/** The count is the number of characters in the String. */
private final int count;
/** Cache the hash code for the string */
private int hash; // Default to 0
/** use serialVersionUID from JDK 1.0.2 for interoperability */
private static final long serialVersionUID =
-6849794470754667710L;

7. Is Java bad at memory management?
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
final long start = Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory();
final byte[][] arrays = new byte[100][];
for (int i = 0; i < arrays.length; i++) {
arrays[i] = new byte[100];
long current = Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory();
System.out.println(start + " " + current);
Thread.sleep(1000);
}
}

8. Agenda
1. Brief historical view
2. Myths and Urban legends
3. GC machinery*
4. Try to stay out of trouble
5. Tony Printezis
* Credits for the GC insights go to
Tony Printezis and his excellent
J1 sessions

9. Garbage collector
Let’s start with a simple memory example…

10. Garbage collector
Mark-Sweep
Root object
Mark-Sweep

11. Garbage collector
Mark-Sweep
Root object
Mark-Sweep – Marking…

12. Garbage collector
Mark-Sweep
Root object
Free List Root
Mark-Sweep – Sweeping…

13. Garbage collector
Let’s try another one …

14. Garbage collector
Mark-Compact
Root object
Mark-Compact

15. Garbage collector
Mark-Compact
Root object
Mark-Compact – Marking…

16. Garbage collector
Mark-Compact
Root object
Mark-Sweep – Compacting…
Free Pointer

17. Garbage collector
Let’s try another one …

18. Garbage collector
Copying
Root object
Copying
From space
To space Free and unused

19. Garbage collector
Copying
Root object
Copying – Evacuation
From space
To space Free and unused

20. Garbage collector
Copying
Root object
Copying – Flipping
From space
To space Free and unused
Free Pointer

21. Garbage collector
Let’s try another one … ;o)

22. Garbage collector
Generational Garbage Collection
Generational Garbage Collection – moving to more modern times
Young generation
Old Generation
Allocations
Promotion

23. Java Heap
Hotspot JVM
Memory layout
Hotspot JVM (Java) heap layout
Young generation
Old Generation
Perm Generation
Everything
else

24. Java Heap
Hotspot JVM
Memory layout
Hotspot JVM (Java) heap layout
Young generation
Old Generation
Perm Generation
Everything
else
Maximum size is limited:
■ 32 bit -> 2Gb
■ 64 bit -> way larger
If 2Gb is the max for the process – you can’t get it all
for the Java heap only!

25. Hotspot JVM
Memory layout
Hotspot JVM (Java) heap layout
Survivor spaces
Old Generation
Perm Generation
Young generation
unused
Eden
From To

26. Hotspot JVM
Memory layout
Hotspot JVM (Java) – (Small) GC running
Survivor spaces
Old Generation
Perm Generation
Young generation
unused
Eden
From To

27. Hotspot JVM
Memory layout
Hotspot JVM (Java) – (Minor) GC running
Survivor spaces
Old Generation
Perm Generation
Young generation
unused
Eden
From To

28. Hotspot JVM
Memory details
-Xmx, -Xms, -Xmn
 Control the Java Object heap size only
 Doesn’t have impact on Perm size, native heap and the Thread stack size
-XX:PermSize, -XX:MaxPermSize
 Stores class definitions, methods, statis fields
 Common reason for OOM errors.
-Xss
 Configures the stack size of every thread.
-XX:+UseTLAB, -XX:-UseTLAB, -XX:+PrintTLAB
 Enables the Thread Local Allocation Buffer.
 Since Java SE 1.5 – this is automatically tuned to each and every thread.
TCP Connection buffer sizes – allocated in native space
 Use Socket.setSendBufferSize(int) and Socket.setReceiveBufferSize(int).
 OS will use the smaller of the two or will simply ignore that setting.
Object allocation statistics:
■ Up to 98% of new objects are
short-lived
■ Up to 98% die before another
Mb is allocated

29. Agenda
1. Brief historical view
2. Myths and Urban legends
3. GC machinery
4. Try to stay out of trouble

30. OutOfMemoryError
How to proceed?
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
 Increase the Perm Space – will help if there is no code generation happening
 In case of a leak – the only solution is frequent system restart.
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread
 Decrease –Xmx or –Xss
java.lang.StackOverflowError
 Increase –Xss or fix the corresponding algorithm
IOException: Too many open files (for example)
 Increase the OS file handle limit per process
 Check for leaking file handles
 Physical limit of the VM is 2048 ZIP/JAR files opened at the same time.
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Direct buffer memory
 Direct mapped memory – used for java.nio.ByteBuffer
 Increase -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize

31. Finalizer methods
Good or bad
Again short answer: it depends ;-)
Infrastructure components
 Might be used for debugging/tracing purposes
 Major scenario – closing of critical backend resources
 All finalizer methods are collected separately. No mass-wipe is performed on them!
 Never, ever throw an exception in a finalizer!
Applications
 Avoid finalizers by all means!
Per-request created objects
 Avoid finalizers by all means!
Finalizer queue
Working threads
Finalizer thread (singleton)

32. Response time peaks
without CMS
All those are full GCs…

33. No more full GCs…
Response time peaks
with CMS

34. Garbage Collection Strategies
Does it pay off to play with that?
-XX:+UseSerialGC
 Default state before Java 5. Obsolete!
-XX:+UseParallelGC - Parallel Scavange GC (1.4.2)
 Works on Young Generation only
 Use -XX:ParallelGCThreads to configure it
-XX:+UseParNewGC - Parallel New-Gen GC (5.0)
 Use also –XX:SurvivorRatio and –XX:MaxTenuringThreshold to
define the lifespan of objects in the eden space.
 -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled to trigger concurrent cleanup of
the Perm space
-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC - Concurrent Old-Gen GC
 Default since Java SE 5.
-XX:+UseParallelOldGC - Concurrent Old-Gen GC (5.0)
 Parallel Compaction of Old space
Terms:
• Serial – 1 thing at a
time
• Parallel – work is
done in multiple
threads
• Concurrent – work
happens
simultaneously

35. Garbage Collection Ergonomics
What’s that?
New way to configure GC – specify:
 Max pause time goal (-XX:MaxGCPauseMillis)
 Throughput goal (-XX:GCTimeRatio)
 Assumes minimal footprint goal
 Use -XX:+UseParallelGC with those.
 Garbage First (G1) GC will be the default in Java SE 7. Released
with JDK 1.6.0_u14 for non-productive usage.
 Enable that for testing via:
 -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions
 -XX:+UseG1GC

36. Analyzing Garbage Collection output
Getting GC output is critical for further analysis!
 -verbose:gc get 1 line per GC run with some basic inf
 -XX:+PrintGCDetails get more extended info (perm, eden, tenured)
 -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps get timestamps since the start of the VM. Allows correlation
 -XX:-TraceClassUnloading get also the unloaded classes – helps tracing leaks
 -Xloggc:gc.log direct GC output to a special file instead of the process output
 -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError Heap dump generation on OutOfMemory

37. GC Viewer
GC output viewer
 Import the gc.out file.
 Correlate over time
 So far the most
comprehensive viewer
 Stay tuned and monitor
the Eclipse news ;-)

38. Visual VM
Supplied by Oracle with JDK
 Free and very comprehensive
 Evolves together with the VM.
 Focus shifting from that to
Mission Control (the Jrockit
profiling solution)

39. Eclipse Memory Analyzer
Developed by SAP and IBM in Eclipse
 Track GC roots
 Do what-if analysis
 SQL-like query language
 Custom filters
 Track Leaking
classloaders

40. Garbage Collection – the universal settings
There are NO universal settings! Sorry. :(
 G1 is the first GC, trying to go in that direction and leave the self-tuning to the VM
 You have to test with realistic load!
 You have to test on realistic hardware!
 Tune the GC as you fix the memory leaks which will inevitably show up.
 Try to find the balance of uptime/restart intervals.

41. Contact Questions?
Krasimir Semerdzhiev
krasimir.semerdzhiev@sap.com