Increase heap size in Java

Question

I am working on a Windows 2003 server (64-bit) with 8 GB RAM. How can I increase the heap memory maximum? I am using the -Xmx1500m flag to increase the heap size to 1500 Mb. Can I increase the heap memory to 75% of physical memory (6 GB Heap)?

Answer 1

Several people pointed out the specific answers for heap size with the jvm options of -Xms and -Xms. I want to point out that this is not the only type of memory options for the jvm. Specifically if you are get stack over flows, then you'll want to increase the size of the stack by adding an additional option like -Xss8m.

For this problem, the jvm options of something like -Xms2g -Xmx6g -Xss8m would be a solution.

I'm sharing this information as my google searches on how to increase jvm memory took me to this solution, and the solutions didn't work with high amounts of memory allocation. Once I figured out what the specific settings were for, I was able to google how to increase the stack size and found the missing param. :) Hope this saves others time, as it would of saved me a ton of time. :)

Answer 2

You can increase the Heap Size by passing JVM parameters -Xms and -Xmx like below:

For Jar Files:

java -jar -Xms4096M -Xmx6144M jarFilePath.jar

For Java Files:

 java -Xms4096M -Xmx6144M ClassName

The above parameters increase the InitialHeapSize (-Xms) to 4GB (4096 MB) and MaxHeapSize(-Xmx) to 6GB (6144 MB).

But, the Young Generation Heap Size will remain same and the additional HeapSize will be added to the Old Generation Heap Size. To equalize the size of Young Gen Heap and Old Gen Heap, use -XX:NewRatio=1 -XX:-UseAdaptiveSizePolicy params.

java -jar -Xms4096M -Xmx6144M -XX:NewRatio=1 -XX:-UseAdaptiveSizePolicy pathToJarFile.jar

-XX:NewRatio = Old Gen Heap Size : Young Gen HeapSize (You can play with this ratio to get your desired ratio).

Answer 3

It is possible to increase heap size allocated by the JVM in eclipse directly In eclipse IDE goto

Run---->Run Configurations---->Arguments

Enter -Xmx1g(It is used to set the max size like Xmx256m or Xmx1g...... m-->mb g--->gb)

Answer 4

This only works with 64 bit version of Java. Go to Control Panel and click on the Java icon. On the small window of Java Control Panel, click on the Java menu bar and then click on view button.

If you have two Java platforms, disable the previous version of Java, then click on Runtime parameters text field and write -Xmx1024m or less than RAM size. Don't increase heap size equal to RAM otherwise your system will crash.

Answer 5

On a 32-bit JVM, the largest heap size you can theoretically set is 4gb. To use a larger heap size, you need to use a 64-bit JVM. Try the following:

java -Xmx6144M -d64

The -d64 flag is important as this tells the JVM to run in 64-bit mode.