JEP 248: Make G1 the Default Garbage Collector

[Doug Lea]

On 07/30/2015 11:42 AM, charlie hunt wrote:

> While we really like hearing about experiences with G1 GC, (and the other
> collectors as well), let’s try to keep the discussion on this thread on the
> subject G1 GC being made the default GC for JDK 9 by talking about the
> scenarios and the observations of those potentially impacted.
>

In case my last post was not clear :-), there is a scenario
encountered by java.util.concurrent users in which G1 performance
is much, much worse:

> ... there is a full memory fence when issuing
> cross-region GC write barriers. Most concurrent producer-consumer
> designs hit this case frequently, and can run almost arbitrarily
> slower, down to the rate of issuing fences (MFENCE/DMB/etc).

Maybe usage is not common enough to outweigh the pathological
performance.  Also, I've been experimenting with some changes
in j.u.c algorithms to mitigate impact, but I don't think I can
make a large dent in the big slowdowns I see on microbenchmarks.
So until that fence is removed, all we can do is tell heavy j.u.c
users to turn off G1 in jdk9.

As mentioned in other discussions, G1 might otherwise be
a good choice in some heavily concurrent programs.
Before they put in that fence, I used to see about an
equal number of ups and downs vs other collectors in test programs.

-Doug