You can also measure the amount of memory a process tends to use in typical operation, then spawn it with an appropriately sized heap. It never needs to do GC a

You can also measure the amount of memory a process tends to use in typical operation, then spawn it with an appropriately sized heap. It never needs to do GC at all, it just dies and frees its heap when complete. Look at min_heap_size in spawn_opt/* . It's the same concept as giving a copying garbage collector really large subspaces - GC only happens when one fills. Giving each process its own heap means that the GC pauses will still be brief.