Comparison of Malloc() Algorithms (egbert.net)
67 points by egberts1 2 days ago
Someone 20 minutes ago
Not a good article, IMO.
FTA: “When multiple threads simultaneously allocate or deallocate memory from the allocator, the allocator will serialize them. Programs making intensive use of the allocator actually slow down as the number of processors increases.”
The article does later retract on that, but that’s no reason to lead with such a blatantly false (with current allocators) statement.
Also FTA “In 2006, a third pool was introduced (after operating system memory pool and library-based memory pool) called the “arena”. Arena is a jemalloc-term”
Jemalloc is from around 2005 (http://jemalloc.net/), the idea of arenas is from the 1960s, and Wikipedia claims the term was coined in 1990 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region-based_memory_management...), and the linked paper (https://www.cs.princeton.edu/techreports/1988/191.pdf) is from 1988.
Then, a typo: “as well as memory tied to specific to each of the multiple CPU core or even CPU infinity.”
“Infinity” should be “affinity” there.
eqvinox 11 minutes ago
The tables look mostly correct, and that's what I'll be bookmarking this for… I don't think I've seen any elsewhere that are this extensive (in both axis, total allocators covered & details per allocator).
benjojo12 2 hours ago
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH on my phone it seems?
j4k0bfr an hour ago
Same, from Chrome on Android
Nnnes 2 hours ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20260915165314/https://egbert.ne...
Funny SSL setup. Explanation from here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133598
> Oh, certain browser will not work with this blog if it cannot negotiate ONLY for Cha-Cha/Poly. It's by design as a showcase of why that particular web browser refuses to do that.
I assume the "particular web browser" is Chromium, which won't load it on any OS I've tried. On Windows, Firefox and the built-in curl.exe also refuse to connect.
ncruces 24 minutes ago
Thanks for the link.
Article makes it look like nothing happened in the embed/low-memory/single-threaded malloc space in decades since Doug Lea's malloc.
I just implemented TLSF for my minimal Wasm libc: fragmentation is just as good, performance is a lot more consistent (and on average better), for a significant reduction in code size.
http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/index.html
https://github.com/ncruces/wasm2go/blob/main/libc-gen/c/mall...
undefined 34 minutes ago
bom-d-van an hour ago
legend.
ligarota an hour ago
Please write a "how to setup SSL" article
eqvinox 13 minutes ago
It seems to be intentional & if somebody wants to make a statement about TLS with their personal website that's their choice to make and execute.