The key characteristics of the Go GC
The key characteristics of the Go garbage collector are the following:
- Concurrent and parallel: The Go GC operates concurrently with the execution of Go programs. It runs concurrently with the application’s threads, meaning that the GC can perform its work without stopping the application that is being executed. Additionally, certain phases of the GC can be parallelized to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern CPUs.
- Generational collector: The Go GC uses a generational garbage collection strategy, dividing objects into two generations: young and old. Most objects are allocated to the young generation, and most garbage collection work is focused there. The old generation contains longer-lived objects, which are less likely to get garbage collected.
- Tri-color mark and sweep algorithm: The Go GC uses a tri-color mark-and-sweep algorithm. This algorithm uses three colors (white, gray, and black) to track the...
