Other than that, I don't know enough details about ptmalloc to speculate, except to say that for most real-world workloads on modern systems, the impact of the malloc implementation is likely to be negligible. Of course, test results would be interesting...
Some language interpreters by design malloc()/realloc()/free() memory constantly. Python being a well known example of such an interpreter.
Because the issues with memory allocators are legion in the context of a multitude of platforms, Python eventually gained a highly specialised allocator geared to its usage patterns (which brought some other benefits with it too). I think I've seen references to Perl doing something similar.
The performance degradations due to corner cases in allocator design exposed by Python (when using native platform allocators rather than its own) is often painful.
Nothing comes for free though, and Python's allocator has a limitation that a small percentage of users find painfull - it doesn't return vacant arenas to the OS, which with some usage patterns gives rise to large amounts of wasted swap space.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew I MacIntyre "These thoughts are mine alone..."
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (pref) | Snail: PO Box 370
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (alt) | Belconnen ACT 2616
Web: http://www.andymac.org/ | Australia
_______________________________________________
freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
