Does the Sun JVM slow down when more memory is allocated via -Xmx?

Answer 1

More memory usually gives you better performance in garbage collected environments, at least as long as this does not lead to virtual memory usage / swapping.

The GC only tracks references, not memory per se. In the end, the VM will allocate the same number of (mostly short-lived, temporary) objects, but the garbage collector needs to be invoked less often - the total amount of garbage collector work will therefore not be more - even less, since this can also help with caching mechanisms which use weak references.

I'm not sure if there is still a server and a client VM for 64 bit (there is for 32 bit), so you may want to investigate that also.

Answer 2

If you just throw more memory at the problem, you will have better throughput in your application, but your responsiveness can go down if you're not on a multi core system using the CMS garbage collector. This is because fewer GCs will occur, but they will have more work to do. The upside is that you will get more memory freed up with your GCs, so allocation will continue to be very cheap, hence the higher througput.

You seem to be confusing -Xmx and -Xms, by the way. -Xms just sets the initial heap size, whereas -Xmx is your max heap size.

Answer 3

By adding more memory, it will take longer for the heap to fill up. Consequently, it will reduce the frequency of garbage collections. However, depending on how mortal your objects are, you may find that how long it takes to do any single GC increases.

The primary factor for how long a GC takes is how many live objects there are. Thus, if virtually all of your objects die young and once you get established, none of them escape the young heap, you may not notice much of a change in how long it takes to do a GC. However, whenever you have to cycle the tenured heap, you may find everything halting for an unreasonable amount of time since most of these objects will still be around. Tune the sizes accordingly.

Answer 4

According to my experience, it does not slow down BUT the JVM tries to cut back to Xms all the time and try to stay at the lower boundary or close to. So if you can effort it, bump Xms as well. Sun is recommending both at the same size. Add some -XX:NewSize=512m (just a made up number) to avoid the costly pile up of old data in the old generation with leads to longer/heavier GCs on the way. We are running our web app with 700 MB NewSize because most data is short-lived.

So, bottom line: I do not expect a slow down, but put your more of memory to work. Set a larger new size area and set Xms to Xmx to lower the stress on the GC, because it does not need to try to cut back to Xms limits...

Answer 5

It typically will not help your peformance/throughput,if you increase -Xmx. Theoretically there could be longer "stop the world" phases but in practice with the CMS that's not a real problem.

Of course you should not set -Xmx to some insane value like 300Gbyte unless you really need it :)