Go Runtime GC Deep Dive¶

Comprehensive analysis of Go's garbage collector implementation (Go 1.23.12), covering theory from source code to production tuning at scale.

Articles¶

Core GC Mechanisms¶

• 01. GC Pacer - How GC decides when to trigger
• 02. GC Sweep - Lazy sweep and bit flipping
• 03. GC Mark - Concurrent marking and STW
• 04. GC Mutator - Write barrier mechanics

Runtime Integration¶

• 05. Allocation and GC - How allocation triggers GC
• 06. Scavenging - Memory return to OS
• 07. STW to Scan Stack - Stack scanning

Production Case Study¶

• 08. GC Tuner Case Study - Large-scale tuning: 67 services, 49K instances, 1.11 PB memory

Reading Order¶

Complete path: 01 → 02 → 03 → 04 → 05 → 06 → 07 → 08

Quick reference: - Production tuning → 01, 05, 06, 08 - Interview prep → 01-04 - STW debugging → 03, 07

Source Code¶

Go 1.23.12: - src/runtime/mgcpacer.go - src/runtime/mgcsweep.go - src/runtime/mgcmark.go - src/runtime/mbarrier.go