Java (JVM) Memory Model

At broad level, JVM Heap memory is physically divided into two parts – Young Generation and Old Generation.

Young Generation
  • Young generation is the place where all the new objects are created.
  • When young generation is filled, garbage collection is performed.
  • This garbage collection is called Minor GC.
  • Young Generation is divided into three parts – Eden Memory and two Survivor Memory spaces.
Important Points about Young Generation Spaces:
  • Most of the newly created objects are located in the Eden memory space.
  • When Eden space is filled with objects, Minor GC is performed and all the survivor objects are moved to one of the survivor spaces.
  • Minor GC also checks the survivor objects and move them to the other survivor space. So at a time, one of the survivor space is always empty.
  • Objects that are survived after many cycles of GC, are moved to the Old generation memory space.
  • Usually it’s done by setting a threshold for the age of the young generation objects before they become eligible to promote to Old generation.
Old Generation
  • Old Generation memory contains the objects that are long lived and survived after many rounds of Minor GC.
  • Usually garbage collection is performed in Old Generation memory when it’s full.
  • Old Generation Garbage Collection is called Major GC and usually takes longer time.
  • All the Garbage Collections are “Stop the World” events because all application threads are stopped until the operation completes.
  • However Major GC takes longer time because it checks all the live objects.
  • Major GC should be minimized because it will make your application unresponsive for the garbage collection duration.
  • So if you have a responsive application and there are a lot of Major Garbage Collection happening, you will notice timeout errors.
Permanent Generation
  • Permanent Generation or “Perm Gen” contains the application metadata required by the JVM to describe the classes and methods used in the application.
  • Note that Perm Gen is not part of Java Heap memory.
  • Perm Gen is populated by JVM at runtime based on the classes used by the application.
  • Perm Gen also contains Java SE library classes and methods. Perm Gen objects are garbage collected in a full garbage collection.
Method Area
  • Method Area is part of space in the Perm Gen and used to store class structure (runtime constants and static variables) and code for methods and constructors.
Memory Pool
  • Memory Pools are created by JVM memory managers to create a pool of immutable objects, if implementation supports it.
  • String Pool is a good example of this kind of memory pool.
  • Memory Pool can belong to Heap or Perm Gen, depending on the JVM memory manager implementation.
Runtime Constant Pool
  • Runtime constant pool is per-class runtime representation of constant pool in a class.
  • It contains class runtime constants and static methods.
  • Runtime constant pool is the part of method area.
Java Stack Memory
  • Java Stack memory is used for execution of a thread.
  • They contain method specific values that are short-lived and references to other objects in the heap that are getting referred from the method.
Java Heap Memory Switches
  • -Xms  –  For setting the initial heap size when JVM starts
  • -Xmx  –  For setting the maximum heap size.
  • -Xmn  –  For setting the size of the Young Generation, rest of the space goes for Old Generation.
  • -XX:PermGen  –  For setting the initial size of the Permanent Generation memory
  • -XX:MaxPermGen  –  For setting the maximum size of Perm Gen

Reference:  journaldev


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