CLR Performance: Essential Tools and Techniques

Quick Overview:
The application performance depends on numerous factors, one of which is the common language runtime. You should focus on CLR performance improvement to reduce loading time and execute operations within the minimal time possible. To help you with this, we have listed the tools and techniques for the three main CLR components, which help your CLR achieve the utmost speed, stability, and scalability.

CLR Performance

CLR performance is considered a primary concern while enhancing the working of a dotnet application. CLR contains numerous components, and to improve its functionality, you have to focus on all those internal parts. Otherwise, it can negatively impact the workflow.

But you don’t need to fret anymore, as we have provided the details about the tools and techniques for CLR performance enhancement. You can use all those methods to assuredly gain the expected results.

Key Areas for CRL Performance Optimization

The performance of CLR mostly depends on three main components, including the garbage collector, Just-in-Time compiler, and the memory management mechanism. There are also some additional or third-party tools that you should utilize to enhance CLR performance. We are also going to discuss them in the following sections.

Additionally, professionals recommend making the CLR components more optimized and efficient to increase performance and potential. So, let’s have a look at all these three components and improve their functionality to augment overall CLR performance.

What is CLR Garbage Collection?

Firstly, we have the garbage collection mechanism, which functions more as a memory allocation and deallocation component. It ensures that no memory gets wasted and all the processes have enough of it to work seamlessly.

In addition, the entire garbage collector procedure is divided into four phases.

Phase 1: Allocation

Whenever CLR creates a new object, it allocates a memory unit from the available heap and manages it accordingly.

Phase 2: Marking

The marking process gets executed continuously in the background. It helps identify objects using memory through the application of a root traversal mechanism.

Phase 3: Sweeping

During the marking procedure, if the garbage collector finds an object in an inactive state but still has some memory allocated to it. Then, it executes the sweeping process, deallocates the memory unit, and updates the heap.

Phase 4: Compacting

During this process, the garbage collector moves the objects around so that larger memory allocations can be freed and used for other operations.

Now, this was the overall procedure executed by the garbage collector in CLR. To enhance it, you can use the approach or method provided below.

Garbage Collector Performance Optimization

To enhance the garbage collector, you should choose the right mode. It works on a workstation, server, and concurrent mode.

Workstation mode focuses on desktop apps and helps reduce pause times for better responsiveness. Further, the server works best for server-based applications so that the utmost scalability and performance can be availed. Lastly, the concurrent mode works simultaneously with the application, and it also reduces pause times.

Additionally, you can use tools, such as dotnet-counters and PerfView, to monitor and track the health garbage collector. You can take the tool’s output as insight into CLR, which will improve the exact cause of slow processing.

Enhancing Performance in CLR: JIT Compilation

The Just-in-Time compiler is considered one of the most popular and primary components of the CLR. Its main duty is to provide the machine code by converting the MSIL or IL code. If you optimize its performance, the dotnet application performance will assuredly improve to a greater extent.

In addition, before you optimize the JIT, you should know about all three JIT types as listed below.

• Normal JIT:  This is the most common JIT, which executes the code when the user calls it for the very first time. When normal JIT gets used, the application performance is average.
• Pre-JIT: It converts the IL to machine code before the user installs the .NET application. Due to this, the loading and startup time gets minimized.
• Tiered JIT: It combines both normal and Pre-JIT leverages. However, it works in two main scenarios. If the code is accessed at intervals, then it uses normal JIT, otherwise pre-JIT mechanism.

JIT Performance Optimization

To improve the JIT performance, use any of the following three approaches. However, along with this, you also need to choose the right JIT for your application.

• Use BenchmarkDotNet for JIT performance monitoring and profiling.
• Discover the hotspots and create R2R images for them to save loading, startup, and execution time.
• Provide pre-compiled code to the users or utilize Pre-JIT to save time and other resources.

Efficient Memory Management in CLR: Tips and Tricks

The memory management component of the CLR should be optimized to enhance the performance. To help you achieve this, we have provided the most reliable tips and tricks from industry professionals.

In addition, all the tips align with the regulatory standards. However, an intermediate to advanced level of .NET development experience is required.

• Configuring the applications to reuse the objects will help save resources used for memory allocation and deallocation. Moreover, you can also implement an object pool for this purpose.
• If your application utilizes strings in a large quantity, then using the “StringBuilder” class is a must.
• You should use the “dotMemory” tool, which enables you to monitor memory health, detect leaks, and patch them with a perfect solution.

With all these mechanisms, you can efficiently improve the CLR memory management.

Wrapping Up

Every development team should execute CLR performance optimization tasks. It helps save resources, reduce loading time, and provide a seamless user experience. You have to focus on the main three components for it: the garbage collector, memory manager, and the JIT compiler. By taking all the above-mentioned approaches into consideration, you can improve CLR performance in the minimal time required for the extended run.