Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Test out the different GC algorithms

The latest versions of the IBM JVM provide a number of different Garbage Collection (GC) algorithms. Since no one algorithm is always the best to use it is imperative that the performance test plan allows for testing that cycles through each of the GC algorithms, adjusts the parameters based on the verboseGC output and sees if the results help improve the application's performance.

For example, I have noticed on a number of engagements around Process Server that using the gencon (generational garbage collection) has a positive effect on the server's performance. Obviously tuning the nursery and tenured spaces is necessary based on each individual application from the verbose GC output. But the fact that Process Server always seems to run better with gencon it is one of the first things I like to test out.

On the flip side, there are some tools out there that dynamically create object classes. My understanding is these are used for transformations but what I don't get is why they need to be dynamically created. Most object transformations are from one static object model to another. Once the transform is generated to continually generate another duplicate object makes no sense. Anyhow, I digress... the point I'm trying to make is that when dynamically generating lots of object classes (oh, say about 10,000 per second!) this can create serious havoc with the GC algorithms. In this particular case of 10k/sec it actually ends up looking like a native heap leak when using gencon. Thus if you're doing something like this (and I hope you're not but that is a different posting) then you may have to look at one of the GC opt algorithms instead.


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