Understanding Generations and Operation Modes

The garbage collector is based on generations that are basically a counter representing how many times an object survived to the garbage collection. The .NET Framework supports three generations. The first one is named gen0 and is when the object is at its pure state. The second generation is named gen1 and is when the object survived to one garbage collection, whereas the last generation is named gen2 and is when the object survived to more than two garbage collections. This is a good mechanism for the garbage collector’s performances because it first goes to remove objects at gen2 instead of searching for all live references. The garbage collection process is available in two modes: server and workstation. ...

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