Java – Speedup IntelliJ-Idea

intellij-ideajavaperformancewindows

I'm using intelliJ for Scala development and got 8 GB of new RAM last week, so I thought: time to use it. I checked my task manager and found intelliJ using ~250mb. From eclipse I knew that tweaking JVM options helped a lot in improving speed, so I googled …

and found this one for OS X
I couldn't find the JVM option immediately, so I started tweaking Xmx. At 1 GB, I realized it doesn't start any more. I checked the intelliJ java version, found it's outdated and 32bit.

So in order to use your current JDK and 64 bit you have to change your link to from:

IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 10.0.2\bin\idea.exe

to

IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 10.0.2\bin\idea.BAT

and adjust "Start in"

The bat looks for JDK_HOME and uses 64bit now.

My current VM Options, which are located in

...\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 10.0.2\bin\idea.exe.vmoptions

are

-Xms512m
-Xmx1024m
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m
-ea
-server
-XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions
-XX:+UseParallelGC

Instead of -XX:+UseParallelGC, you can use -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC, which is

the accepted choice for desktop apps,
but I have changed to the throughput
collector recently. because with a
fast machine and a small enough heap,
you have quick pauses, more throughput
and no issues with fragmentation
(ijuma. #scala)

Changes:

-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC //removed
// removed, because not needed with the lastest JVM.
    -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions
    -XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis
    -XX:+UseCompressedOops

I'll stick to these options for now. I would really like to know your experience with it.

Which options work best for you?
How do I hide this cmd window while running intelliJ through the .bat? 🙂

By the way, here's another link for tuning intelliJ. Basically it says on p.20/21 to turn off windows restore and antivirus for system dirs.

Another way to speed up intelliJ is to put intellij system folder on ramdrive (thanks OlegYch|h).

from idea.properties 
idea.system.path=${idea.home}/.IntelliJIdea/system

See Superuser for Win 7 64bit RAM Drive or this one.
1 GB seems fine for me.

Another hint a friend gave me is to exclude the project directories from your antivirus (scan on access)

There are similar posts regarding tuning Eclipse:

Best Answer

This combination works great on my Intellij13 running in Mavericks:

Updated Jul 18, 2017:

# custom IntelliJ IDEA VM options

-ea
-server
-Xms2G
-Xmx4096M
-Xss2m
-XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=2G
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=1G
-XX:MetaspaceSize=512m
-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
-XX:+DoEscapeAnalysis
-XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=50
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
-Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false
-XX:LargePageSizeInBytes=256m
-XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing
-XX:ParallelGCThreads=8
-XX:+DisableExplicitGC
-XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrent
-XX:+PrintGCDetails
-XX:+PrintFlagsFinal
-XX:+AggressiveOpts
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
-XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=60
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
-XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled
-XX:+UseAdaptiveGCBoundary
-XX:+UseSplitVerifier
-XX:CompileThreshold=10000
-XX:+OptimizeStringConcat
-XX:+UseStringCache
-XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods
-XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions
-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
-XX:-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow
-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=lcd

-Dsun.java2d.renderer=sun.java2d.marlin.MarlinRenderingEngine

I keep this setting updated at https://github.com/adben/config/blob/master/idea64.vmoptions

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