GC does not release mem of large objects completly

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WinstonSmith

Hello everyone,

I got a problem about GC when creating large fields (some MB), set reference
to null and call GC.Collect. Not all virtual mem is released. Situation
improved in .net 1.1 but not in a full satisfying way.

Has anyone a solution to handle large object in safe code?
(Unsafe mem management works, but has serious disadvantages on
serialization.)

Thanks in advance
 
Hi Winston

Objects in the large object heap are put in generation 2, so if you want to
force a collection of large objects, make sure you run Collect with no
parameters, or with GC.MaxGeneration as a parameter.

The CLR uses memory internally, so even though you've just run GC.Collect,
there is some memory not considered garbage that the runtime uses.

For example, if you write an app, and all it does is print
GC.GetTotalMemory to the console twice, then GC.Collect, then
GetTotalmemory again, you'll notice memory not freed.

Hope that helps
-Chris


--------------------
From: "WinstonSmith" <[email protected]>
Subject: GC does not release mem of large objects completly
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 17:46:27 +0200
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Hello everyone,

I got a problem about GC when creating large fields (some MB), set reference
to null and call GC.Collect. Not all virtual mem is released. Situation
improved in .net 1.1 but not in a full satisfying way.

Has anyone a solution to handle large object in safe code?
(Unsafe mem management works, but has serious disadvantages on
serialization.)

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...


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Chris,

As far as I know large objects (>85K - CLR v1.1) are directly stored in the large object heap not the Gen2 heap.
The problem with the large object heap is that while he can get collected, he never gets compacted.
Allocations require contiguous blocks of memory, when the allocation scheme is irregular, allocated memory tend to grow, this seems
to be one of the problems the GC can't handle yet.

Willy.

:
|| Hi Winston
||
|| Objects in the large object heap are put in generation 2, so if you
|| want to force a collection of large objects, make sure you run
|| Collect with no parameters, or with GC.MaxGeneration as a parameter.
||
|| The CLR uses memory internally, so even though you've just run
|| GC.Collect, there is some memory not considered garbage that the
|| runtime uses.
||
|| For example, if you write an app, and all it does is print
|| GC.GetTotalMemory to the console twice, then GC.Collect, then
|| GetTotalmemory again, you'll notice memory not freed.
||
|| Hope that helps
|| -Chris
||
 
Thank you for your help...
So its an design flaw of .net? Does anyone know, if it's going to be fixed
in later releases?

Matthias

Willy Denoyette said:
Chris,

As far as I know large objects (>85K - CLR v1.1) are directly stored in
Click to expand...
the large object heap not the Gen2 heap.
The problem with the large object heap is that while he can get collected, he never gets compacted.
Allocations require contiguous blocks of memory, when the allocation
Click to expand...
scheme is irregular, allocated memory tend to grow, this seems
 
Hi Willy,

That's right. I guess I wasn't clear in my response. Large objects are in the large object heap, but are only collected at the same time as gen 2.

You are correct, the large object heap does not get compacted.

Matthias, this is not a flaw in the GC, rather a tradeoff, since the performance hit for compacting large allocations outweighs the benefit of coniguous blocks.


Hope that's clearer :)
-Chris

--------------------
From: "WinstonSmith" <[email protected]>
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Thank you for your help...
So its an design flaw of .net? Does anyone know, if it's going to be fixed
in later releases?

Matthias


the large object heap not the Gen2 heap.
scheme is irregular, allocated memory tend to grow, this seems
Click to expand...


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