How Can I Minimize Garbage Collection Delays in High-Performance .NET Applications?

Pausing Garbage Collection for Optimal Performance

In a high-performance .NET application handling vast data, object churn can be a performance bottleneck, particularly when coupled with significant Garbage Collection (GC) overhead. However, there arise brief periods where GC delays must be absolutely avoided.

.NET 4.6 introduces two methods to address this issue:

• GC.TryStartNoGCRegion: Temporarily suspends GC for a specific code block.
• GC.EndNoGCRegion: Resumes GC after the code block completes.

Usage:

using System;

private static bool UseNoGC()
{
    if (GC.TryStartNoGCRegion())
    {
        // Code that should not be interrupted by GC
        ...

        GC.EndNoGCRegion();
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

Alternatives:

• System.GC.Collect: Manually invoking GC before the critical period can reduce the likelihood of a delay during that period. However, the duration of GC suppression is not guaranteed.
• Manual Resource Management: Implementing a custom IDisposable interface for critical classes allows manual control over object lifetimes, reducing the burden on GC.

Minimizing GC Overhead:

• Reuse Objects: Avoid creating and discarding large numbers of short-lived objects.
• Use Value Types: Prefer value types (e.g., structs) to reference types (e.g., classes) when possible, as they are typically not tracked by GC.
• Avoid Large Arrays and Collections: Split large collections into smaller chunks to minimize GC overhead when collecting them.
• Use Weak References: For objects that are not immediately needed, consider using weak references to avoid keeping them in memory unnecessarily.
• Optimize Garbage Collection: Use performance profiling tools to identify areas where GC overhead is high and optimize those parts of the code.

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