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.tx         


        

Answer 1

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.