CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javacmemoryjava-native-interface
drye
drye

Reputation: 1402

Memory footprint issues with JAVA, JNI, and C application

I have a piece of an application that is written in C, it spawns a JVM and uses JNI to interact with a Java application. My memory footprint via Process Explorer gets upto 1GB and runs out of memory. Now as far as I know it should be able to get upto 2GB. One thing I believe is that the memory the JVM is using isn't visible in the Process Explorer. My xmx is set to 256, I added some statements to watch the java side memory and it is peaking at 256 and GC is doing its job and it is all good on that side. So my question is, where is the other 700+ MB being consumed? Anyone out there a Java/JNI/C Memory expert?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3878

Answers (6)

Dan
Dan

Reputation: 974

Write a C test harness and use valgrind/alleyoop to check for leakage in your C code, and similarly use the java jvisualvm tool.

Upvotes: 0

drye
drye

Reputation: 1402

Well thanks to all of your help especially @alexander I have discovered that all the extra memory that isn't visible via Process Explorer is being used by the Java Heap. In fact via other tests that I have run the JVM's memory consumption is included in what I see from the Process Explorer. So the heap is taking large amounts of memory, I will have to do some more research about that and maybe ask a separate question.

Upvotes: 0

Alexander
Alexander

Reputation: 9370

Try a test app in C that doesn't spawn the JVM but instead tries to allocate more and more memory. See whether the test app can reach the 2 GB barrier.

Upvotes: 1

Mike Tunnicliffe
Mike Tunnicliffe

Reputation: 10772

There could be a leak in the JNI code.

Remember to use (*jni)->DeleteLocalRef() for any object references you get once you are done with them. If you use any native C buffers to create new Java objects, make sure you free them off once the object is created. Check the JNI Specification for further guidelines.

Depending on the VM you are using you might be able to turn on JNI checking. For example, on the IBM JDK you can specify "-Xcheck:jni".

Upvotes: 1

Alexander
Alexander

Reputation: 9370

If you say that it's the Windows process that runs out of memory as opposed to the JVM, then my initial guess is that you probably invoke some (your own) native methods from the JVM and those native methods leak memory. So, I concur with @John Gardner here.

Upvotes: 0

John Gardner
John Gardner

Reputation: 25146

The C and JNI code can allocate memory as well (malloc/free/new/etc), which is outside of the VM's 256m. The xMX only restricts what the VM will allocate itself. Depending on what you're allocating in the C code, and what other things are loaded in memory you may or may not be able to get up to 2GB.

Upvotes: 0

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