RFR(XS): 8001425: G1: Change the default values for certain G1 specific flags

[Charlie Hunt]

Hi John,

Fwiw, I'm fine with Bengt's suggestion of having G1NewSizePercent the same for all Java heap sizes.

I'm on the fence with whether to do the same with G1MaxNewSizePercent.  For me I find the MaxNewSizePercent a bit tricky than NewSizePercent.  WIth NewSizePercent, if young gen is sized "too small", I think the worst case is we have some GCs that are well below the pause time target.  But, with MaxNewSizePercent, if it's allowed to get "too big", then the worst case is evacuation failures.

So, if you did move MaxNewSizePercent down to 60, we'd have a situation where we'd be less likely to have evacuation failures.  Perhaps it's ok to apply this change to all Java heap sizes too?

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts along with Monica's, Jon Masa, John Coomes and Ramki, if they have time of course.

hths,

charlie ...

On Jan 10, 2013, at 12:47 PM, John Cuthbertson wrote:

> Hi Bengt,
> 
> Thanks for reviewing the code. Replies inline...
> 
> On 1/10/2013 2:07 AM, Bengt Rutisson wrote:
>> 
>> Hi John,
>> 
>> Changes look good.
>> 
>> One question about G1NewSizePercent and G1MaxNewSizePercent. Why are 
>> these only changed for heap sizes below 4GB? I would think that at 
>> least the reduction of G1NewSizePercent would be even more important 
>> for larger heap sizes. If we want to get lower pause times on larger 
>> heaps we need to be able to have a small young gen size.
> 
> The simple answer is: it was suggested by Monica and Charlie. Personally 
> I'm OK with making the new values of G1NewSizePercent and 
> G1MaxNewSizePercent the defaults for all heap sizes and we might (or 
> most likely will) go there in the future - but for the moment we're 
> being conservative.
> 
> As I mentioned we would like to make G1 a bit more adaptive - and both 
> Monica and Charlie have some ideas in that area.
> 
>> 
>> Also, your change in arguments.cpp is guarded by #ifndef SERIALGC. 
>> This is correct of course, but Joe Provino has a change out that will 
>> replace this kind of check with #if INCLUDE_ALL_GCS:
>> 
>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~jprovino/8005915/webrev.00
>> 
>> Neither you nor Joe will get any merge conflicts if your changes are 
>> both pushed. It will even still compile. But the code inside #ifndef 
>> SERIALGC will never be executed. So, it might be good to keep any eye 
>> out for how Joe's change propagate through the repositories to make 
>> sure that you can manually resolve this.
>> 
>> My guess is that Joe's change will have to wait a while since it 
>> includes make file changes that potentially interfere with changes for 
>> the new build system. So, hopefully you get to push this first :)
> 
> Thanks. I've been watching the progress that Joe's change has been 
> making. I guess you can think of this change as the one for hs24 and 
> another with the SERIALGC changed appropriately being for hs25. :)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> JohnC
>