Selective injection of GC safepoints for JNI invocations

A computer program product for managing Garbage Collection (GC) safepoints in a Virtual Machine (VM), the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to perform a method comprising:

• removing, by a hardware processor of the computer, a GC safepoint responsive to any of low GC frequency conditions based on (i) a heap occupancy ratio, determined by calculating a proportion of used memory to total available heap memory. prior to executing a target native method being less than a threshold occupancy amount percentage and (ii) a most recent GC pause time being shorter by a threshold pause time amount percentage than an execution time of the target native method;
• and
• reducing operational interruptions and latency caused by utilizing full memory fences at the GC safepoint by performing, by the hardware processor, garbage collection with the GC safepoint under high GC frequency conditions, as conditions other than low GC frequency conditions, determined to enhance performance of an application, and removing low GC frequency safepoints determined to be unnecessary to avoid utilization of the full memory fences that degrade performance of the application, the removing low GC frequency safepoints being executed by the VM automatically based on the heap occupancy ratio and the most recent GC pause time.

A computer processing system for managing Garbage Collection (GC) safepoints in a Virtual Machine (VM), comprising:

• a memory device for storing program code;
• and
• a processor device operatively coupled to the memory device for running the program code to remove a GC safepoint responsive to any of low GC frequency conditions based on (i) a heap occupancy ratio, determined by calculating a proportion of used memory to total available heap memory, prior to executing a target native method being less than a threshold occupancy amount percentage and (ii) a most recent GC pause time being shorter by a threshold pause time amount percentage than an execution time of the target native method;
• and
• reducing operational interruptions and latency caused by utilizing full memory fences at the GC safepoint by performing garbage collection with the GC safepoint under high GC frequency conditions, as conditions other than low GC frequency conditions, determined to enhance performance of an application, and removing low GC frequency safepoints determined to be unnecessary to avoid utilization of the full memory fences that degrade performance of the application, the removing low GC frequency safepoints being executed by the VM automatically based on the heap occupancy ratio and the most recent GC pause time.