Garbage Collection Roots
A garbage collection root is an object that is accessible from outside the heap. The following reasons make an object a GC root:
System Class
Class loaded by bootstrap/system class loader. For example, everything from the rt.jar like java.util.* .
JNI Local
Local variable in native code, such as user defined JNI code or JVM internal code.
JNI Global
Global variable in native code, such as user defined JNI code or JVM internal code.
Thread Block
Object referred to from a currently active thread block.
Thread
A started, but not stopped, thread.
Busy Monitor
Everything that has called wait() or notify() or that is synchronized. For example, by calling synchronized(Object) or by entering a synchronized method. Static method means class, non-static method means object.
Java Local
Local variable. For example, input parameters or locally created objects of methods that are still in the stack of a thread.
Native Stack
In or out parameters in native code, such as user defined JNI code or JVM internal code. This is often the case as many methods have native parts and the objects handled as method parameters become GC roots. For example, parameters used for file/network I/O methods or reflection.
Finalizable
An object which is in a queue awaiting its finalizer to be run.
Unfinalized
An object which has a finalize method, but has not been finalized and is not yet on the finalizer queue.
Unreachable
An object which is unreachable from any other root, but has been marked as a root by MAT to retain objects which otherwise would not be included in the analysis.
Java Stack Frame
A Java stack frame, holding local variables. Only generated when the dump is parsed with the preference set to treat Java stack frames as objects.
Unknown
An object of unknown root type. Some dumps, such as IBM Portable Heap Dump files, do not have root information. For these dumps the MAT parser marks objects which are have no inbound references or are unreachable from any other root as roots of this type. This ensures that MAT retains all the objects in the dump.
Shallow vs. Retained Heap
Shallow heap is the memory consumed by one object. An object needs 32 or 64 bits (depending on the OS architecture) per reference, 4 bytes per Integer, 8 bytes per Long, etc. Depending on the heap dump format the size may be adjusted (e.g. aligned to 8, etc...) to model better the real consumption of the VM.
Retained set of X is the set of objects which would be removed by GC when X is garbage collected.
Retained heap of X is the sum of shallow sizes of all objects in the retained set of X, i.e. memory kept alive by X.
Generally speaking, shallow heap of an object is its size in the heap and retained size of the same object is the amount of heap memory that will be freed when the object is garbage collected.
The retained set for a leading set of objects, such as all objects of a particular class or all objects of all classes loaded by a particular class loader or simply a bunch of arbitrary objects, is the set of objects that is released if all objects of that leading set become unaccessible. The retained set includes these objects as well as all other objects only accessible through these objects. The retained size is the total heap size of all objects contained in the retained set.
The Minimum Retained Size gives a good (under)estimation of the retained size which is calculated ways faster than the exact retained size of a set of objects. It only depends on the number of objects in the inspected set, not the number of objects in the heap dump.
