®

IBM Software Group

IBM® SDK, Java™ Technology Edition, V6

Heap dump changes

© 2007 IBM Corporation

Updated December 17, 2007

This presentation discusses the changes in how the virtual machine produces heap dumps
in the IBM SDK for Java Version 6.

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Agenda

Heap dump overview

Change in default heap dump behavior

Heap dump compression and performance improvements

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This presentation will start with a brief description of heap dumps and then discuss the
changes in heap dump behavior in the IBM SDK for Java Version 6, including the default
conditions for producing heap dumps, file compression, and performance improvements.

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Heap dump overview

Heap dumps contain information about the Java heap

All objects in the heap

Identifying Java class

References to other objects in the heap

Default heap dump format is binary

Text format is also available

Control heap dump behavior using –Xdump:heap command-line
options

Memory Dump Diagnostic for Java is the recommended tool for
processing heap dumps

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Heap dump changes © 2007 IBM Corporation

The term heap dump describes the IBM Virtual Machine for Java mechanism that
generates a dump of all the live objects that are on the Java heap; that is, those that are
being used by the running Java application. The heap dump file contains information
about all of the objects in the heap, including the identifying Java class for each object and
references to other objects in the heap and is produced when the Java heap is exhausted.
This dump is stored in a portable heap dump file, a compressed binary format, by default.
The text or classic heap dump is a list of all object instances in the heap, including object
type, size, and references between objects, in a human-readable format. It is in EBCDIC
on z/OS and in ASCII on all other platforms. Use the environment variable
IBM_JAVA_HEAPDUMP_TEXT=true to enable text heap dumps. You can use various
tools on the heap dump output to analyze the composition of the objects on the heap and,
for example, help to find the objects that are controlling large amounts of memory on the
Java heap and the reason why the garbage collector cannot collect them. The preferred
heap dump analysis tool, Memory Dump Diagnostic for Java, is available in IBM Support
Assistant.

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Heap dump default behavior

In V5, heap dumps were produced by default for any uncaught
java/lang/OutOfMemoryError event

In V6, heap dumps are produced for any
java/lang/OutOfMemoryError event triggered by the virtual machine

This change was also backported to Java 5 SR5

-Xdump:heap:events=systhrow,
-Xdump:heap:events=systhrow,
filter=java/lang/OutOfMemoryError,
filter=java/lang/OutOfMemoryError,
label=C:\test\heapdump.%Y%m%d.%H%M%S.%pid.phd,
label=C:\test\heapdump.%Y%m%d.%H%M%S.%pid.phd,
...
...

Use the –Xdump:what command-line option to see all default dump

agents

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Heap dump changes © 2007 IBM Corporation

In Version 5, heap dumps were produced by default for any uncaught OutOfMemoryError
event, including OutOfMemoryErrors produced in user code. The default behavior has
changed in Version 6, so that heap dumps are produced for OutOfMemoryErrors triggered
by the virtual machine. The new systhrow event has been added in this release to support
this new heap dump behavior. The example on the slide shows a portion of the default
dump agent configuration for heap dumps. You can see the default behavior for all of the
dump agents in your Java environment by running with the –Xdump:what command-line
parameter.

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Heap dump compression

Binary heap dump compression

Previous release did not take advantage of PHD
compression allowed in the file format specification

As a result, on 64-bit platforms, dumps could be up to 10
times larger than similar dumps from earlier releases

PHD format dumps now take advantage of the
compression supported in the file format specification

Dump processing tools continue to work as expected

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When moving from Version 1.4.2 to Version 5.0 of the SDK, some users experienced a
large increase in heap dump file size on 64-bit platforms. In Version 6, the Portable heap
dump file format has been updated to allow for more compression in binary heap dump
files. Many users may notice substantially smaller heap dump files when moving from the
Version 5.0 SDK to Version 6. While the underlying PHD format has changed, heap dump
processing tools like the Memory Dump Diagnostic for Java will continue to function as
expected.

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Heap dump performance

Improved dump performance

Able to write the dump file faster because of:

Compression – there is less data to write to file

Caching – crossing over to do native file system operations less frequently

Writing heap dumps can be over 10 times faster than
Java 5

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Heap dump changes © 2007 IBM Corporation

In conjunction with the updates for compressed heap dump files, it is now also much faster
to write heap dumps to disk. Clearly, it will be faster to record smaller files in the file
system. In addition to the compression scheme, the SDK now incorporates a caching
mechanism for writing heap dump files so that the dump generator performs fewer native
file operations. Crossing over the boundary to write data out to a file is an expensive
operation, so this new caching scheme offers substantial performance improvements. In
some cases in Version 6, you will see that heap dumps are generated more than 10 times
as fast as similar heap dump files in the Java 5 SDK.

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Section

Summary and references

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Heap dump changes © 2007 IBM Corporation

This section contains a summary and reference.

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Summary

Heap dumps contain information about the Java heap

Produced by the new systhrow trigger on
java/lang/OutOfMemoryError events

Heap dump compression and performance improvements

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Heap dump changes © 2007 IBM Corporation

Heap dump files contain information about all of the objects in the Java heap. A new
dump trigger – systhrow – was introduced in this release to allow heap dumps to be
generated by default when the virtual machine triggers an OutOfMemoryError event.
Heap dump files are also smaller than in the previous release, and this compression and a
new caching scheme mean that the heap dump generator can produce heap dump files
faster.

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References

Diagnostics guide

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/javasdk/v6r0/index.jsp

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