Garbage collection (GC) is a form of automatic memory management and a key feature of the Java Platform. It allows developers to focus on their application logic rather that low-level memory management problems.

The Java platform is moving forward at a great pace, introducing new, exciting features in every release. Still, a lot of deployments are using JDK 8, which at this point is more than a decade old. From a GC performance point of view, everything has improved since then and the overhead usually associated with automatic memory management has been reduced significantly. In this talk we will explore:

• the basics of GC
• the available GC algorithms and their key differences
• the benefits of choosing the right GC and upgrading to a recent JDK

Make sure to check the JavaOne 2025 playlist.