A fascinating jvm they missed is azul. They claim they can handle 300+GB heaps with pauses < 10 ms by radically changing how gc works. Skim this: http://www.ar

A fascinating jvm they missed is azul. They claim they can handle 300+GB heaps with pauses < 10 ms by radically changing how gc works. Skim this: http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/azul_pauseless_gc.html http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/azul_pauseless_gc.html Essentially it continually compacts the heap, but simply doesn't remap all pointers to an object. They then tool the OS vm system / TLB with memory barriers and fix up pointers on access instead of fixing up pointers on relocation/compaction. Also, this is a pretty interesting talk about what exactly goes on in a modern jvm. Worth listening to http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/cliff-click-in-jvm-does-what.html http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/cliff-click-in-jvm-... The speaker works for azul systems. Regarding the article, I wonder if it's worthwhile or if there is any research into recycling objects or something like c++ placement new? I guess it doesn't really make sense because in java objects are mostly just a collection of pointers, whereas in C++ objects can themselves be fairly large.