.NET object creation and generations

Question

Is there a way to tell the .NET to allocate a new object in generation 2 heap. I have a problem where I need to allocate approximately 200 MB of objects, do something with them, and throw them away. What happens here is that all the data gets copied two times (from gen0 to gen1 and then from gen1 to gen2).

Answer 1

There is no way to allocate directly in generation 2. All allocations happen in generation 0 and for large objects on the LOH.

However, data is generally not copied when objects move to a new generation. Instead the start points of the different heaps are moved. The objects may be moved due to compaction of the heap, but that is a different story.

If it is important to store objects in generation 2, you could reuse the instances. I.e. make some init method on the types and call this instead of creating new instances.