I know that profiling using VisualVM (or most other profilers) can substantially change the garbage collection behavior of an application (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;psy-lob-saw.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-escape-of-arraylistiterator.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;psy-lob-saw.blogspot.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-escape-of-arrayl...</a>).<p>I don&#x27;t know if using VisualVM in the way this article does has the same effect--sounds like the author is not doing any actual profiling, so it may not be an issue. Additionally, since this is a synthetic benchmark, you might argue that it&#x27;s not important. Still, I&#x27;d tend to think it makes more sense to use OS level tools to monitor the CPU usage and avoid changing the behavior of the JVM.