#935 – Large Objects Are Allocated on the Large Object Heap
September 20, 2013 5 Comments
The managed heap is the area in memory where reference-typed objects are allocated. When you create a new object, a portion of the managed heap is allocated for the object.
In reality, objects are stored on either the Small Object Heap (SOH) or the Large Object Heap (LOH). Objects that are larger than 85,000 bytes are allocated on the LOH. All other objects are allocated on the SOH.
Other differences between the two heaps:
- The SOH is generational–objects belong to generation 0, 1, or 2. The LOH is not sub-divided into generations
- The LOH is only garbage collected when generation 2 of the SOH is collected. (I.e. Rarely)
- After the LOH is garbage collected, the heap is not compacted. This results in the memory becoming fragmented and requires maintaining a linked list of free blocks. (The SOH is compacted after every collection).
- Allocation on the LOH can be slower than the SOH, due to the fragmentation.
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You can manually compact the LOH in .net 4.5.1.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mariohewardt/archive/2013/06/26/no-more-memory-fragmentation-on-the-large-object-heap.aspx
Thanks Brian
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larger than 85,000 what?
Larger than 85,000 bytes. I’ve clarified this in the post. Thanks for pointing out the confusion.