Comment by cogman10

Unfortunately, the JVM and collectors like the JVM's plays really bad with virtual memory. (Actually, G1 might play better. Everything else does not).

The issue is that through the standard course of a JVM application running, every allocated page will ultimately be touched. The JVM fills up new gen, runs a minor collection, moves old objects to old gen, and continues until old gen gets filled. When old gen is filled, a major collection is triggered and all the live objects get moved around in memory.

This natural action of the JVM means you'll see a sawtooth of used memory in a properly running JVM where the peak of the sawtooth occasionally hits the memory maximum, which in turn causes the used memory to plummet.