Briefly describe garbage collection

Question

Briefly describe garbage collection? Differentiate between garbage collections in .NET 4.0 and previous versions?

Answer 1

Garbage collection prevents memory leaks throughout execution of programs. Garbage collector is a low-priority procedure which handles the de-allocation and allocation of memory for application. It ensures for the variables and objects which are not referenced. If Garbage Collector discovers some object which is no longer utilized by the application, it sets the memory free from the object.

GC has altered a bit with the introduction of .NET 4.0. .NET 4.0, uses the GC.Collect() method which contains the following overloaded methods such as:

GC.Collect(int, GCCollectionMode)
GC.Collect(int)

Another latest feature introduced in .NET is to inform you that when the GC.Collect() method is called up and completed effectively by using different methods. The .NET 4.0 supports a newest background garbage collection that substitute the simultaneous garbage collection used in previous versions. This concurrent GC assigns memory at the time of running and uses present segment (which is 16 MB on a workstation) for that. Following that, all threads are suspended. In case of background GC, a separate ephemeral GC - gen0 and gen1 can be initiated, though the full GC - gen0, 1, and 2 - is already running.