[Haskell-cafe] The Garbage Collector Ate My Homework

Tim Chevalier catamorphism at gmail.com
Wed Jul 4 02:43:49 EDT 2007


[I assume this was meant to go to the list as well, so I'm adding it
back to the CCs]

On 7/3/07, Thomas Conway <drtomc at gmail.com> wrote:
> It occurs to me that tweaking the GC parameters can probably make a
> big difference: is starting with a bigger heap likely to help, or more
> generations? My generation hypothesis is that more generations will
> encourage the cached data to drop down out of generation 0, reducing
> the GC load.
>

Starting with a bigger heap is likely to help, since it means that GCs
will be needed less often. I'm not sure I buy your generation
hypothesis, because even with two generations, you would expect to see
some of the cached data move to generation 1. Lots of data in
generation 0 implies your code continues to allocate many objects as
it goes on running. On the other hand, you could still try and see if
it helps.

Cheers,
Tim

-- 
Tim Chevalier* catamorphism.org *Often in error, never in doubt
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little
longer."  -- Henry Kissinger


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