parallel gc versus serial gc

Hi ,

We use oracle application server and have some pausing problems inside
the java vm. The problem shows itself as pausings of executions , when
clients start to get late responses ( here lat e means < 4 sec. ) , i
see more than 10 garbage collector operations . The client applications
are web services and do database queries. The java process ( the os is
sun solaris) , according to the prstat , has > 1000 threads inside ,
and during the garbage collectiong phase , consumes more than 60% cpu
time. ( the server has 2 cpus - 2 gb. ram) The java process uses the
following parameters:

What i think is , the reason of the suspensions is garbage collector
activity.

In order to decrease the time that cause pausing , i either increase
the virtual memory allocated by the java process , or change the
garbage collector method. Before adding up mor memory to teh system ,
i want to be sure the effect of changing garbag ecollector methodology.

The gc used here is serial garbage collector , in order to speed it up
, the documents say that parallel garbage collector is used.

I write a small test program . This program creates 1000 threads .
Each thread creates objects by using new in a loop , and this causes
the garbage collector runs heavily in order to clean teh garbages. And
i run the program bu using different garbage collectors but
unfortunately , i dont see great difference beetween serial and
parallel gc ,and serial gc is faster.

Why does this so?

Serial gc:

 timex java -verbose:gc -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps
-Xmx450m -Xms450m -XX:+PrintGCApplicationConcurrentTime
-XX:+PrintGCApplicationStoppedTime -XX:+UseSerialGC test > test1

real 23.48
user 3:26.67
sys 4.33

parallel gc:

 timex java -server -verbose:gc -XX:+PrintGCDetails
-XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -Xmx450m -Xms450m
-XX:+PrintGCApplicationConcurrentTime
-XX:+PrintGCApplicationStoppedTime -XX:+UseParallelGC test > test1

real 24.35
user 3:24.68
sys 30.95

and here is the test code:

(I run this test on a bigger box , 24gb.ram , 6 dual core solaris cpus
)


import java.util.*;
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

 class testTh extends Thread
{
   public int val ;
  public testTh ( int pval) { val=pval; }
    public void run() {
       int i=0;
    String s =new String("aaaa");
  boolean flag=true;
  while (flag)
     {
         for (int j=0;j<100000;j++) {
            s = new String("aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa");
        }
        i++;
        if (i>10) flag=false;
    }
    }
}

public class test
{
  public void dene() {
    for ( int j=0;j<1000;j++)
  (new testTh(j)).start();

       }
  public static void main(String args[])
   {
        test t = new test();
        t.dene();
}
}

Kind Regards,
hope