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So, very simple question indeed. With my RAM-limited dev machine (8GB of RAM, Win 7 x64, 8GB of pagefile), when I run out of available RAM, programs first start to slow down, and eventually crash. Most of the time JVM crashes first and very happily. How is this possible? Its like there is no pagefile at all, yet when I hit 8th gig of used RAM JVM (and sometimes other programs as well) crash almost instantly.
Yes, I know very well all paging mechanisms in place mainly by HW, which once again shoud work with pagefile as if there is plenty of RAM available knowing nothing about page file beeing used or even existing. So why do I actually observe very different behaviour?
user32569
Posted 2015-05-19T20:19:10.010
Reputation: 739
Why close votes? Windows memory management is driving me crazy sometimes, without any real explanation. So I though maybe someone has similiar problems. I would just like to know why is this happening. – user32569 – 2015-05-19T20:35:29.343
Java relies on garbage collection to release memory. A program with tight loops or one continually creating objects may not release memory promptly; and there is no way to force garbage collection (setting pointers to null is a hint to Java GC but does not immediately relinquish memory). I've encountered the same issue on Solaris OS as well as on Windows. – DrMoishe Pippik – 2015-05-19T21:33:16.087