Garbage collection on the iSeries™ Java™ virtual machine operates in a continuous asynchronous mode. The garbage collection-initial size (GCHINL) parameter on the Run Java (RUNJVA) command may affect application performance.
The GCHINL parameter specifies the amount of new object space that is allowed between garbage collections. A small value may cause too much garbage collection overhead. A large value may limit garbage collection and cause out of memory errors. However, for most applications, the default values should be correct.
Garbage collection determines that an object is no longer needed by evaluating whether there are any valid references to that object.