Increasing the JVM maximum heap size for memory intensive applications

When you are using JVM in 32-bit mode, the maximum heap size that can be allocated is 1280 MB. So, if you want to go beyond that, you need to invoke JVM in 64-mode.

You can use following:

$ java -d64 -Xms512m -Xmx4g HelloWorld

where,

• -d64: Will enable 64-bit JVM
• -Xms512m: Will set initial heap size as 512 MB
• -Xmx4g: Will set maximum heap size as 4 GB

You can tune in -Xms and -Xmx as per you requirements (YMMV)

A very good resource on JVM performance tuning, which might want to look into: http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/hotspot/gc/gc_tuning_6.html

Get yourself a 64-bit JVM from Oracle.

I believe the 2GB limit is for 32-bit Java. I thought v1.6 was always 64 bit, but try forcing 64 bit mode just to see: add the -d64 option.

32-bit Java is limited to approximately 1.4 to 1.6 GB.

Oracle 32 bit heap FAQ

Quote

The maximum theoretical heap limit for the 32-bit JVM is 4G. Due to various additional constraints such as available swap, kernel address space usage, memory fragmentation, and VM overhead, in practice the limit can be much lower. On most modern 32-bit Windows systems the maximum heap size will range from 1.4G to 1.6G. On 32-bit Solaris kernels the address space is limited to 2G. On 64-bit operating systems running the 32-bit VM, the max heap size can be higher, approaching 4G on many Solaris systems.

Below conf works for me:

JAVA_HOME=/JDK1.7.51-64/jdk1.7.0_51/
PATH=/JDK1.7.51-64/jdk1.7.0_51/bin:$PATH
export PATH
export JAVA_HOME

JVM_ARGS="-d64 -Xms1024m -Xmx15360m -server"

/JDK1.7.51-64/jdk1.7.0_51/bin/java $JVM_ARGS -jar `dirname $0`/ApacheJMeter.jar "$@"