Size of Java Objects

I'm sure you know that measuring the size of objects in Java is not so easy since there is no C style sizeof() functionality. Additionally, the actual size used to store an object on the Java heap depends on several variables: the JVM implementation, operation system (32/64 Bit) etc. Hence, a particular value for the amount of storage consumed by an object can be compared to the size of another object, but not between different runtime environments.

So... how can the size of an object (i.e. it's memory usage) be determined? There are actually two possibilities. Both are well-known and not invented by me, so I only provide some basic information and links.

1) Use Runtime.freeMemory()

The usual (old-fashioned) way to estimate the size of an object is like this: call garbage collector (GC) to ensure all unused memory is freed, then count current memory consumption (M1), construct the object, GC once again and count memory (M2). The difference M2-M1 indicates the amount of memory used for the created object.

There are a few things to note:

• A single call to GC is more or less only a suggestion to the Java Virtual Machine to reclaim space from all discarded objects – it's no guarantee that GC has been finished (method is not blocking) and all old objects have been removed. To be a bit more aggressive, GC should be used a couple of times.


• To make sure that supplementary memory (for static data etc.) is already allocated before starting memory count, you should construct an object and set the handle to null before starting the estimation cycle described above.


• The precision might increase when creating not a single object, but a large amount of them.

JavaWorld's Java Tip 130 described this approach, and Heinz Kabutz published two JavaSpecialists newsletters (Issue 29, 78) about determining memory usage in Java.

Addtionally, there is an open source project java.sizeOf at SourceForge using this approach.

2) Use Instrumentation.getObjectSize()

Starting with Java 5 there is a new method to determine object size: the instrumentation interface. It's getObjectSize() method is still an estimate, but seems to provide more accurate results, albeit a bit slower than counting free memory.

In short, you have to implement an instrumentation agent that contains a premain(String, Instrumentation) method that will be called by the JVM on startup. The given instrumentation can be used to call methods on it later on. The agent has to be packaged into a JAR file that requires a Premain-Class specification in it's manifest file. To use the instrumentation agent, call java with the -javaagent option. For more information, see here and this blog post.

Guess what, Heinz Kabutz has published another JavaSpecialists newsletter 142 describing this approach (you see, it's really worth subscribing!). Refer to this java.net article for another example of how to use Java instrumentation.


That's it for today... One more remark: note that both described ways are not able to provide exact figures, but only estimates of memory consumption. This is not really an issue because these estimates are typically exact for small objects, and size of complex data structures can be calculated using the known size of basic types and data structures.

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