What is Garbage collection?

Garbage Collection:

The .NET Framework uses automatic garbage collection to manage memory for all applications. When you use the new operator to create an object, the object's memory is obtained from the managed heap. When the garbage collector decides that sufficient garbage has accumulated that it is efficient to do so, it performs a collection to free some memory. This process is fully automatic, but there are a number of factors that you need to be aware of that can make the process more or less efficient. To understand the principles of garbage collection, you need to understand the life cycle of a managed object:

1. Memory for an object is allocated from the managed heap when you call new. The object's constructor is called after the memory is allocated.

2. The object is used for a period of time.

3. The object dies due to all its references either being explicitly set to null or else going out of scope.

4. The object's memory is freed (collected) some time later. After the memory is freed, it is generally available for other objects to use again.

Allocation

The managed heap can be thought of as a block of contiguous memory. When you create a new object, the object's memory is allocated at the next available location on the managed heap. Because the garbagecollector does not need to search for space, allocations are extremely fast if there is enough memory available. If there is not enough memory for the new object, the garbage collector attempts to reclaim space for the new object.

Collection

To reclaim space, the garbage collector collects objects that are no longer reachable. An object is no longer reachable when there are no references to it, all references are set to null, or all references to it are from other objects that can be collected as part of the current collection cycle.

When a collection occurs, the reachable objects are traced and marked as the trace proceeds. The garbage collector reclaims space by moving reachable objects into the contiguous space and reclaiming the memory used by the unreachable objects. Any object that survives the collection is promoted to the next generation.

Generations

The garbage collector uses three generations to group objects by their lifetime and volatility:

● Generation 0 (Gen 0). This consists of newly created objects. Gen 0 is collected frequently to ensure that short-lived objects are quickly cleaned up. Those objects that survive a Gen 0 collection are promoted to Generation 1.

● Generation 1 (Gen 1). This is collected less frequently than Gen 0 and contains longer-lived objects that were promoted from Gen 0.

● Generation 2 (Gen 2). This contains objects promoted from Gen 1 (which means it contains the longest-lived objects) and is collected even less frequently. The general strategy of the garbage collector is to collect and move longer-lived objects less frequently.

The CLR provides two separate garbage collectors:

● Workstation GC (Mscorwks.dll). This is designed for use by desktop applications such as Windows Forms applications.

● Server GC (Mscorsvr.dll). This is designed for use by server applications. ASP.NET loads server GC but only if the server has more than one processor. On single processor servers, it loads workstation GC.

Server GC is optimized for throughput, memory consumption, and multiprocessor scalability, while the workstation GC is tuned for desktop applications. When using the server GC, the managed heap is split into several sections, one per CPU on a multiprocessor computer. When a collection is initiated, the collectorhas one thread per CPU; all threads collect their own sections simultaneously.

The workstation version of the execution engine (Mscorwks.dll) is optimized for smaller latency. Workstation GC performs collection in parallel with the CLR threads. Server GC

suspends the CLR threads during collection. You might sometimes need the functionality of the server GC for your custom application when hosting it on a multiprocessor computer. For example, you might need it for a Windows service that uses a .NET remoting host and is deployed on a multiprocessor server. In this scenario, you need to develop a custom host that loads the CLR and the server GC version of the garbagecollector.