Learning .NET High-performance Programming

Garbage collection

As mentioned, garbage collection (GC) is the engine that cleans up the memory of managed heap within the CLR with an internal algorithm and its own triggering engine. Although it is impossible to know exactly when the GC will fire, its algorithm is detailed in many articles on MSDN and relative blogs and also has known trigger points, for instance, when CLR needs lots of new memory. The GC memory cleanup operation is named collect.

Microsoft gives us the ability to trigger the collector manually, by invoking the GC.Collect method. Although this option is available, manually triggering the GC is something to avoid because every usage will interfere with CLR abstraction of the underlying system.

The GC collection occurs multiple ...