Maximum Java heap size of a 32-bit JVM on a 64-bit

Question

The question is not about the maximum heap size on a 32-bit OS, given that 32-bit OSes have a maximum addressable memory size of 4GB, and that the JVM's max heap size depends on how much contiguous free memory can be reserved.

I'm more interested in knowing the maximum (both theoretical and practically achievable) heap size for a 32-bit JVM running in a 64-bit OS. Basically, I'm looking at answers similar to the figures in a related question on SO.

As to why a 32-bit JVM is used instead of a 64-bit one, the reason is not technical but rather administrative/bureaucratic - it is probably too late to install a 64-bit JVM in the production environment.

Answer 1

From 4.1.2 Heap Sizing:

"For a 32-bit process model, the maximum virtual address size of the process is typically 4 GB, though some operating systems limit this to 2 GB or 3 GB. The maximum heap size is typically -Xmx3800m (1600m) for 2 GB limits), though the actual limitation is application dependent. For 64-bit process models, the maximum is essentially unlimited."

Found a pretty good answer here: Java maximum memory on Windows XP.

Answer 2

We recently had some experience with this. We have ported from Solaris (x86-64 Version 5.10) to Linux (RedHat x86-64) recently and have realized that we have less memory available for a 32 bit JVM process on Linux than Solaris.

For Solaris this almost comes around to 4GB (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/hotspotfaq-138619.html#gc_heap_32bit).

We ran our app with -Xms2560m -Xmx2560m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -XX:PermSize=512m with no issues on Solaris for past couple of years. Tried to move it to linux and we had issues with random out of memory errors on start up. We could only get it to consistently start up on -Xms2300 -Xmx2300. Then we were advised of this by support.

A 32 bit process on Linux has a maximum addressable address space of 3gb (3072mb) whereas on Solaris it is the full 4gb (4096mb).

Answer 3

The JROCKIT JVM currently owned by Oracle supports non-contiguous heap usage, thus allowing the 32 bit JVM to access more then 3.8 GB of memory when the JVM is running on a 64 bit windows OS. (2.8 GB when running on a 32 bit OS).

http://blogs.oracle.com/jrockit/entry/how_to_get_almost_3_gb_heap_on_windows

The JVM can be freely downloaded (registration required) at

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/jrockit/downloads/index.html

Answer 4

You can ask the Java Runtime:

public class MaxMemory {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
        long totalMem = rt.totalMemory();
        long maxMem = rt.maxMemory();
        long freeMem = rt.freeMemory();
        double megs = 1048576.0;

        System.out.println ("Total Memory: " + totalMem + " (" + (totalMem/megs) + " MiB)");
        System.out.println ("Max Memory:   " + maxMem + " (" + (maxMem/megs) + " MiB)");
        System.out.println ("Free Memory:  " + freeMem + " (" + (freeMem/megs) + " MiB)");
    }
}

This will report the "Max Memory" based upon default heap allocation. So you still would need to play with -Xmx (on HotSpot). I found that running on Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, my 32-bit HotSpot JVM can allocate up to 1577MiB:

[C:scratch]> java -Xmx1600M MaxMemory
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.
[C:scratch]> java -Xmx1590M MaxMemory
Total Memory: 2031616 (1.9375 MiB)
Max Memory:   1654456320 (1577.8125 MiB)
Free Memory:  1840872 (1.75559234619 MiB)
[C:scratch]>

Whereas with a 64-bit JVM on the same OS, of course it's much higher (about 3TiB)

[C:scratch]> java -Xmx3560G MaxMemory
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
[C:scratch]> java -Xmx3550G MaxMemory
Total Memory: 94240768 (89.875 MiB)
Max Memory:   3388252028928 (3184151.84297 MiB)
Free Memory:  93747752 (89.4048233032 MiB)
[C:scratch]>

As others have already mentioned, it depends on the OS.

• For 32-bit Windows: it'll be <2GB (Windows internals book says 2GB for user processes)
• For 32-bit BSD / Linux: <3GB (from the Devil Book)
• For 32-bit MacOS X: <4GB (from Mac OS X internals book)
• Not sure about 32-bit Solaris, try the above code and let us know.

For a 64-bit host OS, if the JVM is 32-bit, it'll still depend, most likely like above as demonstrated.

-- UPDATE 20110905: I just wanted to point out some other observations / details:

• The hardware that I ran this on was 64-bit with 6GB of actual RAM installed. The operating system was Windows 7 Enterprise, 64-bit
• The actual amount of Runtime.MaxMemory that can be allocated also depends on the operating system's working set. I once ran this while I also had VirtualBox running and found I could not successfully start the HotSpot JVM with -Xmx1590M and had to go smaller. This also implies that you may get more than 1590M depending upon your working set size at the time (though I still maintain it'll be under 2GiB for 32-bit because of Windows' design)

Answer 5

Here is some testing under Solaris and Linux 64-bit

Solaris 10 - SPARC - T5220 machine with 32 GB RAM (and about 9 GB free)

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3750m MaxMemory
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve space for ObjectStartArray
$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3700m MaxMemory
Total Memory: 518520832 (494.5 MiB)
Max Memory:   3451912192 (3292.0 MiB)
Free Memory:  515815488 (491.91998291015625 MiB)
Current PID is: 28274
Waiting for user to press Enter to finish ...

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_30"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_30-b12)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 20.5-b03, mixed mode)

$ which java
/usr/bin/java
$ file /usr/bin/java
/usr/bin/java: ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC Version 1, dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging information available

$ prstat -p 28274
   PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP
28274 user1     670M   32M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% java/35

BTW: Apparently Java does not allocate much actual memory with the startup. It seemed to take only about 100 MB per instance started (I started 10)

Solaris 10 - x86 - VMWare VM with 8 GB RAM (about 3 GB free*)

The 3 GB free RAM is not really true. There is a large chunk of RAM that ZFS caches use, but I don't have root access to check how much exactly

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3650m MaxMemory
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3600m MaxMemory
Total Memory: 516423680 (492.5 MiB)
Max Memory:   3355443200 (3200.0 MiB)
Free Memory:  513718336 (489.91998291015625 MiB)
Current PID is: 26841
Waiting for user to press Enter to finish ...

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_41"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_41-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 20.14-b01, mixed mode)

$ which java
/usr/bin/java

$ file /usr/bin/java
/usr/bin/java:  ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging information available

$ prstat -p 26841
   PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP
26841 user1     665M   22M sleep   59    0   0:00:00 0.0% java/12

RedHat 5.5 - x86 - VMWare VM with 4 GB RAM (about 3.8 GB used - 200 MB in buffers and 3.1 GB in caches, so about 3 GB free)

$ alias java='$HOME/jre/jre1.6.0_34/bin/java'

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3500m MaxMemory
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3450m MaxMemory
Total Memory: 514523136 (490.6875 MiB)
Max Memory:   3215654912 (3066.6875 MiB)
Free Memory:  511838768 (488.1274871826172 MiB)
Current PID is: 21879
Waiting for user to press Enter to finish ...

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_34"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_34-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 20.9-b04, mixed mode)

$ file $HOME/jre/jre1.6.0_34/bin/java
/home/user1/jre/jre1.6.0_34/bin/java: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, not stripped

$ cat /proc/21879/status | grep ^Vm
VmPeak:  3882796 kB
VmSize:  3882796 kB
VmLck:         0 kB
VmHWM:     12520 kB
VmRSS:     12520 kB
VmData:  3867424 kB
VmStk:        88 kB
VmExe:        40 kB
VmLib:     14804 kB
VmPTE:        96 kB

Same machine using JRE 7

$ alias java='$HOME/jre/jre1.7.0_21/bin/java'

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3500m MaxMemory
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine.
Error: A fatal exception has occurred. Program will exit.

$ java -XX:PermSize=128M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -Xms512m -Xmx3450m MaxMemory
Total Memory: 514523136 (490.6875 MiB)
Max Memory:   3215654912 (3066.6875 MiB)
Free Memory:  511838672 (488.1273956298828 MiB)
Current PID is: 23026
Waiting for user to press Enter to finish ...

$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_21"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_21-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 23.21-b01, mixed mode)

$ file $HOME/jre/jre1.7.0_21/bin/java
/home/user1/jre/jre1.7.0_21/bin/java: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, not stripped

$ cat /proc/23026/status | grep ^Vm
VmPeak:  4040288 kB
VmSize:  4040288 kB
VmLck:         0 kB
VmHWM:     13468 kB
VmRSS:     13468 kB
VmData:  4024800 kB
VmStk:        88 kB
VmExe:         4 kB
VmLib:     10044 kB
VmPTE:       112 kB

Answer 6

On Solaris the limit has been about 3.5 GB since Solaris 2.5. (about 10 years ago)