GC Algorithm and Story of WeakReference

Introduction

We all know .NET objects deallocates memory using Garbage Collection. Garbage collection is a special process that hooks in to the object hierarchy randomly and collects all the objects that are not reachable to the application running. Let us make Garbage collection a bit clear before moving to the alternatives.

GC Algorithm

In .NET, every object is allocated using Managed Heap. We call it managed as every object that is allocated within the .NET environment is in explicit observation of GC. When we start an application, it creates its own address space where the memory used by the application would be stored. The runtime maintains a pointer which points to the base object of the heap. Now as the objects are created, the runtime first checks whether the object can be created within the reserved space, if it can it creates the object and returns the pointer to the location, so that the application can maintain a Strong Reference to the object. I have specifically used the term Strong Reference for the object which is reachable from the application. Eventually the pointer shifts to the next base address space.

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