Garbage Collection in Java | Technical, Finance, Investment Questions

Garbage Collection in Java

Surender Pandey

5 years ago

The Heap is divided into three sections:

Young Generation : Newly created objects start in the Young Generation. The Young Generation is further subdivided into an Eden space, where all new objects start, and two Survivor spaces, where objects are moved from Eden after surviving one garbage collection cycle. When objects are garbage collected from the Young Generation, it is a minor garbage collection event.
Old Generation : Objects that are long-lived are eventually moved from the Young Generation to the Old Generation. When objects are garbage collected from the Old Generation, it is a major garbage collection event.
Permanent Generation :
Metadata such as classes and methods are stored in the Permanent Generation. Classes that are no longer in use may be garbage collected from the Permanent Generation.

JVM HotSpot has four Garbage Collectors:

Serial : All garbage collection events are conducted serially in one thread. Compaction is executed after each garbage collection.
Parallel : Multiple threads are used for minor garbage collection. A single thread is used for major garbage collection and Old Generation compaction. Alternatively, the Parallel Old variant uses multiple threads for major garbage collection and Old Generation compaction.
CMS (Concurrent Mark Sweep) : Multiple threads are used for minor garbage collection using the same algorithm as Parallel. Major garbage collection is multi-threaded, like Parallel Old, but CMS runs concurrently alongside application processes to minimize “stop the world” events (i.e. when the garbage collector running stops the application). No compaction is performed.
G1 (Garbage First) : The newest garbage collector is intended as a replacement for CMS. It is parallel and concurrent like CMS, but it works quite differently under the hood compared to the older garbage collectors.

How to make an Object Eligible for GC

Even though programmer is not responsible to destroy useless objects but it is highly recommended to make an object unreachable(thus eligible for GC) if it is no longer required.

Nullifying the reference variable
Re-assigning the reference variable
Object created inside method
Island of Isolation

How to request JVM to run Garbage Collector

Once we made object eligible for garbage collection, it may not destroy immediately by garbage collector. Whenever JVM runs Garbage Collector program, then only object will be destroyed. But when JVM runs Garbage Collector, we can not expect.

We can also request JVM to run Garbage Collector. There are two ways to do it :

Using System.gc() method : System class contain static method gc() for requesting JVM to run Garbage Collector.
Using Runtime.getRuntime().gc() method : Runtime class allows the application to interface with the JVM in which the application is running. Hence by using its gc() method, we can request JVM to run Garbage Collector.

Finalization

Just before destroying an object, Garbage Collector calls finalize() method on the object to perform cleanup activities. Once finalize() method completes, Garbage Collector destroys that object.
Based on our requirement, we can override finalize() method for perform our cleanup activities like closing connection from database.
The finalize() method called by Garbage Collector not JVM. Although Garbage Collector is one of the module of JVM.
Object class finalize() method has empty implementation, thus it is recommended to override finalize() method to dispose of system resources or to perform other cleanup.
The finalize() method is never invoked more than once for any given object.
If an uncaught exception is thrown by the finalize() method, the exception is ignored and finalization of that object terminates.

Benefits of Java Garbage Collection

The biggest benefit of Java garbage collection is that it automatically handles deletion of unused objects or objects that are out of reach to free up vital memory resources. Programmers working in languages without garbage collection (like C and C++) must implement manual memory management in their code.

Despite the extra work required, some programmers argue in favor of manual memory management over garbage collection, primarily for reasons of control and performance. While the debate over memory management approaches continues to rage on, garbage collection is now a standard component of many popular programming languages. For scenarios in which the garbage collector is negatively impacting performance, Java offers many options for tuning the garbage collector to improve its efficiency.

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