Vmalloc: A General and Efficient Memory Allocator

TLDR: The new library Vmalloc generalizes malloc to give programmers more control over memory allocation and shows that Vm alloc is competitive to the best of these allocators.

Abstract: Despite its popularity, malloc's shortcomings frequently cause programmers to code around it. The new library Vmalloc generalizes malloc to give programmers more control over memory allocation. Vmalloc introduces the idea of organizing memory into separate regions, each with a discipline to get raw memory and a method to manage allocation. Applications can write their own disciplines to manipulate arbitrary type of memory or just to better organize memory in a region by creating new regions out of its memory. The provided set of allocation methods include general purpose allocation, fast special cases and aids for memory debugging or profiling. A compatible malloc interface enables current applications to select allocation methods using environment variables so they can tune for performance or perform other tasks such as profiling memory usage, generating traces of allocation calls or debugging memory errors. A performance study comparing Vmalloc and currently popular malloc implementations shows that Vmalloc is competitive to the best of these allocators. Applications can gain further performance improvement by using the right mixture of regions with different Vmalloc methods.