C4: the continuously concurrent compacting collector
C4: the continuously concurrent compacting collector
The C4 garbage collector is a continuously concurrent, compacting, generational collector designed to eliminate stop‑the‑world pauses. Built on the Pauseless GC algorithm, it uses a read barrier to enable concurrent compaction, remapping and incremental update tracing. Its design allows simultaneous generational work and supports modern x86 hardware efficiently. Unlike traditional garbage collectors, C4 maintains responsiveness under heavy loads, providing predictable latency and high throughput, making it ideal for performance‑critical Java applications that require consistent, pause‑free execution.
