[quote]Garbage First, or G1, is a low pause, server style collector. G1’s primary advantages over the Concurrent Mark-Sweep (CMS) collector include incremental compaction, better predictability and ease of use.
Although G1 is available for use in this release, note that production use of G1 is only permitted where a Java support contract has been purchased.
[/quote]
G1 sounds like it would be great for games. Are they seriously requiring us to buy a Java support contract to use it though?
they may talk about it more during javaone. This is a pretty stupid move.
License stuff aside…
G1 is actually slower than the current default garbage collector. Its pauses are simply a lot smaller, yet more frequent.
For games (as in realtime/smooth performance), the best advise is: create less garbage and keep the heap small.
remember this is still an early access version of G1.
Basically they’re getting free alpha testing. You pay them and they let you use G1, and then they also benefit from your bug reports. I’m sure that they won’t charge for G1 in the future when it’s stable and ready to go.
i hope not, but i hope this becomes something great for java. 