From Section 1.2 of our book:
Tip: Creating a shortcut for launching Eclipse provides a way to specify an alternative workspace directory as well as increases the amount of memory allocated to the program. For example:
C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe –data C:\MyWorkspace –vmargs –Xms128M –Xmx256M
In this example, the workspace has been set to C:\MyWorkspace, the starting amount of memory to 128 MB, and the maximum amount of memory to 256 MB. Setting the workspace location is essential if you plan to migrate to newer versions of Eclipse in the future. A complete list of these and other command-line switches such as –vm and -showlocation, can be found in the online help (see Chapter 15, “Implementing Help”) under Workbench User Guide > Tasks > Running Eclipse.
For addition information, see "How can I improve Application Developer/Eclipse startup time, reduce swapping and eliminate unnecessary garbage collection" in the CodePro FAQ.