Does GC release back memory to OS?

Question

When the garbage collector runs and releases memory does this memory go back to the OS or is it being kept as part of the process. I was under the strong impression that the

Answer 1

this article here explains how the GC work in Java 7. In a nutshell, there are many different garbage collectors available. Usually the memory is kept for the Java process and only some GCs release it to the system (upon request I think). But, the memory used by the Java process will not grow indefinitely, as there is an upper limit defined by the Xmx option (which is 256m usually, but I think it is OS/machine dependant).