# Why ruby GC takes only 8 meg of memory?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ruby-gc-takes-only-8-meg-of-memory/56760>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 3, 2006, 5:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ruby-gc-takes-only-8-meg-of-memory/56760 "2006-04-03T17:00:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sayoyo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ba8739/32.png) [@sayoyo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sayoyo)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2006, 5:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ruby-gc-takes-only-8-meg-of-memory/56760/1 "2006-04-03T17:00:39Z")

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Hi,

As I understand, The GC of Ruby can take only 8 meg of memory, I wonder  
if there is any reason behide this ??? ot only a simple hardcode  
feature??? If I want increase the GC memory??? how should I do  
this???

Thanks you very much!!!

Sayoyo

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**Author:** ![sayoyo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ba8739/32.png) [@sayoyo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sayoyo)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ruby-gc-takes-only-8-meg-of-memory/56760/2 "2006-04-03T17:09:58Z")

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8 meg is the amount of memory that Ruby will allocate before running  
GC. It’s not the maximum amount that Ruby can use. Here’s a good  
description of Ruby’s GC:  
[http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/theFullyUpturnedBin.html](http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/theFullyUpturnedBin.html)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sayoyo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ba8739/32.png) [@sayoyo](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sayoyo)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2006, 5:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ruby-gc-takes-only-8-meg-of-memory/56760/3 "2006-04-03T17:19:12Z")

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On Tue, 4 Apr 2006, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:

> 8 meg is the amount of memory that Ruby will allocate before running  
> GC. It’s not the maximum amount that Ruby can use. Here’s a good  
> description of Ruby’s GC:  
> [http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/theFullyUpturnedBin.html](http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/theFullyUpturnedBin.html)

that’s good stuff. thanks for the link (thanks \_why too).

regards.

-a