Speed tradeoff of Java's -Xms and -Xmx options

Question

Given these two commands

A:

$ java -Xms10G -Xmx10G myjavacode input.txt

B:

$ java -Xms5G -Xmx5G myjavacode input.txt

I have two questions:

1. Since command A reserves more memory with its parameters, will A run faster than B?
2. How do -Xmx and -Xms affect the running process and the output of my program?

Answer 1

It depends on the GC your java is using. Parallel GCs might work better on larger memory settings - I'm no expert on that though.

In general, if you have larger memory the less frequent it needs to be GC-ed - there is lots of room for garbage. However, when it comes to a GC, the GC has to work on more memory - which in turn might be slower.

Answer 2

Using those command line options do not affect speed in any way.

They can be useful for expanding the amount of memory the JVM is allowed to use. You may need to do this if your Java app needs a lot of memory to run.

The GC speed/frequency may be affected, but I wouldn't try to optimize your program for GC speed.

Answer 3

It is difficult to say how the memory allocation will affect your speed. It depends on the garbage collection algorithm the JVM is using. For example if your garbage collector needs to pause to do a full collection, then if you have 10 more memory than you really need then the collector will have 10 more garbage to clean up.

If you are using java 6 you can use the jconsole (in the bin directory of the jdk) to attach to your process and watch how the collector is behaving. In general the collectors are very smart and you won't need to do any tuning, but if you have a need there are numerous options you have use to further tune the collection process.

Answer 4

The -Xmx argument defines the max memory size that the heap can reach for the JVM. You must know your program well and see how it performs under load and set this parameter accordingly. A low value can cause OutOfMemoryExceptions or a very poor performance if your program's heap memory is reaching the maximum heap size. If your program is running in dedicated server you can set this parameter higher because it wont affect other programs.

The -Xms argument sets the initial heap memory size for the JVM. This means that when you start your program the JVM will allocate this amount of memory instantly. This is useful if your program will consume a large amount of heap memory right from the start. This avoids the JVM to be constantly increasing the heap and can gain some performance there. If you don't know if this parameter is going to help you, don't use it.

In summary, this is a compromise that you have to decide based only in the memory behavior of your program.

Answer 5

1. Allocation always depends on your OS. If you allocate too much memory, you could end up having loaded portions into swap, which indeed is slow.
2. Whether your program runs slower or faster depends on the references the VM has to handle and to clean. The GC doesn't have to sweep through the allocated memory to find abandoned objects. It knows it's objects and the amount of memory they allocate by reference mapping. So sweeping just depends on the size of your objects. If your program behaves the same in both cases, the only performance impact should be on VM startup, when the VM tries to allocate memory provided by your OS and if you use the swap (which again leads to 1.)