I am running JVM 1.5.0 (Mac OS X Default), and I am monitoring my Java program in the Activity Monitor. I have the following:
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Date;
public class MemoryTest {
public static void memoryUsage() {
System.out.println(
Runtime.getRuntime().totalMemory() -
Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory()
);
}
public static void main( String[] args ) throws IOException {
/* create a list */
ArrayList<Date> list = new ArrayList<Date>();
/* fill it with lots of data */
for ( int i = 0; i < 5000000; i++ ) {
list.add( new Date() );
} // systems shows ~164 MB of physical being used
/* clear it */
memoryUsage(); // about 154 MB
list.clear();
list = null;
System.gc();
memoryUsage(); // about 151 KB, garbage collector worked
// system still shows 164 MB of physical being used.
System.out.println("Press enter to end...");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader( System.in )
);
br.readLine();
}
}
So why doesn't the physical memory get freed even though the garbage collector seems to work just fine?
In Java, the programmer allocates memory by creating a new object. There is no way to de-allocate that memory. Periodically the Garbage Collector sweeps through the memory allocated to the program, and determines which objects it can safely destroy, therefore releasing the memory.
The garbage collector provides the following benefits: Frees developers from having to manually release memory. Allocates objects on the managed heap efficiently. Reclaims objects that are no longer being used, clears their memory, and keeps the memory available for future allocations.
Java Heap space is used by java runtime to allocate memory to Objects and JRE classes. Whenever we create an object, it's always created in the Heap space. Garbage Collection runs on the heap memory to free the memory used by objects that don't have any reference.
Garbage collection makes Java memory efficient because it removes the unreferenced objects from heap memory and makes free space for new objects.
Many JVMs never return memory to the operating system. Whether it does so or not is implementation-specific. For those that don't, the memory limits specified at startup, usually through the -Xmx flag, are the primary means to reserve memory for other applications.
I am having a hard time finding documentation on this subject, but the garbage collector documentation for Sun's Java 5 does address this, suggesting that under the right conditions, the heap will shrink if the correct collector is used—by default, if more that 70% of the heap is free, it will shrink so that only 40% is free. The command line options to control these are -XX:MinHeapFreeRatio
and -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio
.
There are several command line options for the JVM which help to tune the size of the heap used by Java. Everybody knows (or should know) about -Xms and -Xmx, which set the minimum and the maximum size of the heap.
But there is also -XX:MinHeapFreeRatio and -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio which are the respective limits between which the JVM manages free space. It does this by shrinking the used heap, and it can lower the memory consumption of the program.
You can find more information here:
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