doc/internal/gc.md: add practical tuning examples

add workload-specific GC tuning advice based on benchmark data:
- allocation-heavy: interval_ratio 400 for ~12% improvement
- real-time: step_limit for bounded pause times
- large buffers: malloc_threshold
- diagnosing GC overhead with GC.stat

Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto
2026-03-20 18:00:09 +09:00
parent 49dff412b5
commit 30e41242ec
+52
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@@ -426,6 +426,58 @@ when applications allocate large buffers (strings, data objects)
that create memory pressure without proportional object count
increase.
### Practical Tuning Examples
**Allocation-heavy workloads** (many short-lived Procs, closures,
blocks): GC sweep dominates because of high object churn. Increase
`interval_ratio` to reduce GC frequency:
```ruby
GC.interval_ratio = 400 # ~12% faster than default (200)
```
Higher values (400-600) reduce sweep overhead at the cost of more
dead objects accumulating before collection. Values above 600 show
diminishing returns. Peak memory usage increases temporarily, but
live object count after GC remains the same.
**CPU-intensive workloads** (numeric computation, recursive methods
with no object allocation): GC parameters have negligible impact
because GC rarely runs. No tuning needed.
**Real-time or latency-sensitive** applications: Use `step_limit`
to bound pause times:
```ruby
GC.step_limit = 256 # cap incremental step to 256 objects
```
This makes GC pauses more predictable but increases total GC
overhead (more steps needed per cycle).
**Large buffer workloads** (reading files, building long strings):
Set `malloc_threshold` to trigger GC when buffer allocations
accumulate, even if object count is low:
```ruby
GC.malloc_threshold = 1024 * 1024 # trigger GC per ~1MB allocated
```
### Diagnosing GC Overhead
Use `GC.stat` to monitor GC behavior at runtime:
```ruby
s = GC.stat
puts "live objects: #{s[:live]}"
puts "GC debt: #{s[:debt]}" # positive = GC is behind
puts "GC state: #{s[:state]}" # 0=idle, 1=marking, 2=sweeping
```
If `debt` is frequently positive during performance-critical
sections, increase `interval_ratio`. If memory usage is too high,
decrease it.
## Source Files
| File | Contents |