At the start of a GC cycle, the garbage collector computes the assist
ratio based on the total scannable heap size. This was intended to be
conservative; after all, this assumes the entire heap may be reachable
and hence needs to be scanned. But it only assumes that the *current*
entire heap may be reachable. It fails to account for heap allocated
during the GC cycle. If the trigger ratio is very low (near zero), and
most of the heap is reachable when GC starts (which is likely if the
trigger ratio is near zero), then it's possible for the mutator to
create new, reachable heap fast enough that the assists won't keep up
based on the assist ratio computed at the beginning of the cycle. As a
result, the heap can grow beyond the heap goal (by hundreds of megs in
stress tests like in issue #11911).
We already have some vestigial logic for dealing with situations like
this; it just doesn't run often enough. Currently, every 10 ms during
the GC cycle, the GC revises the assist ratio. This was put in before
we switched to a conservative assist ratio (when we really were using
estimates of scannable heap), and it turns out to be exactly what we
need now. However, every 10 ms is far too infrequent for a rapidly
allocating mutator.
This commit reuses this logic, but replaces the 10 ms timer with
revising the assist ratio every time the heap is locked, which
coincides precisely with when the statistics used to compute the
assist ratio are updated.