Garbage collection in .Net 4.0

Question

Is there any change in .Net 4.0 garbage collector execution?

Answer 1

Yes, lots.

My latest book Visual F# 2010 for Technical Computing includes a lot of performance-related information about .NET 4 as well as F# itself and the performance measurements and advice are quite different with .NET 4 and the new background garbage collector. In many cases we're seeing substantial performance improvements but there are some slowdowns as well.

Answer 2

There's also an ephemeron implemenation using a new class called System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ConditionalWeakTable which is detailed here.

This is useful for collecting dynamic languages which allow setting arbitary "properties" on arbitrary instances.

Answer 3

There is also AppDomainResourceManager feature, which allows you to track resource usage ( Memory and CPU ) per appdomain. the GC part of this feature is the ability to get per appdomain memory tracking.

Answer 4

Also, check out the blog of the developer who works on the GC, where there is an article about the new GC, plus a link to a Channel 9 interview regarding the .NET 4.0 GC.

Answer 5

Here's a blog posting:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2008/11/07/clr-4.0-garbage-collection-changes.aspx

and

http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/Background-Collector