A comparison of memory allocators for real-time applications

Masmano, Miguel; Ripoll, Ismael; Crespo, Alfons

doi:10.1145/1167999.1168012

Cited by 25 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…More recently, Masmano et al compared the first-fit, best-fit, binary-buddy [Knuth 1997], DLmalloc [Lea, D. 1996], Half-fit, and TLSF memory allocators for real-time applications [Masmano et al 2006]. Results have indicated that TLSF and Half-fit can be used by real-time applications due to stable and bounded response times.…”

Section: Time-predictable Allocatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Survey on Cache Management Mechanisms for Real-Time Embedded Systems

et al. 2015

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Multicore processors are being extensively used by real-time systems, mainly because of their demand for increased computing power. However, multicore processors have shared resources that affect the predictability of real-time systems, which is the key to correctly estimate the worst-case execution time of tasks. One of the main factors for unpredictability in a multicore processor is the cache memory hierarchy. Recently, many research works have proposed different techniques to deal with caches in multicore processors in the context of real-time systems. Nevertheless, a review and categorization of these techniques is still an open topic and would be very useful for the real-time community. In this article, we present a survey of cache management techniques for real-time embedded systems, from the first studies of the field in 1990 up to the latest research published in 2014. We categorize the main research works and provide a detailed comparison in terms of similarities and differences. We also identify key challenges and discuss future research directions.

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Section: Time-predictable Allocatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, algorithms designed to optimize AVG execution times, such as DLmalloc and binary-buddy, are not suitable for real-time applications. Half-fit achieves bounded response times wasting more memory than TLSF [Masmano et al 2006]. …”

Section: Time-predictable Allocatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Cache Management Mechanisms for Real-Time Embedded Systems

et al. 2015

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“…Hence, these programmers do not know that plenty of heap management algorithms are available and can be used instead of the default memory allocator. Examples of memory allocators currently available are: Hoard [10], jemalloc [14], nedmalloc [15], TCMalloc [16], TSLF [17], among others. Each allocator algorithm has its specifics and several research works (e.g., [10], [17], [18]) have investigated the most used implementations.…”

Section: B User-level Memory Allocator (Uma)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The mechanics of memory-related software aging

Macêdo

Ferreira

Matias

2010

2010 IEEE Second International Workshop on Software Aging and Rejuvenation

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Software aging is a phenomenon defined as the continuing degradation of software systems during runtime, being particularly noticeable in long-running applications. Memory-related aging effects are one of the most important problems in this research field. Therefore understanding their causes and how they work is a major requirement in designing dependable software systems. In this paper we go deep into how memory management works inside application process, focusing on two memory problems that cause software aging: fragmenting and leakage. We explain the mechanics of memory-related software aging effects dissecting a real and widely adopted memory allocator. Along with the theoretical explanation, we present an experimental study that illustrates how memory fragmenting and leakage occur and how they accumulate over time in order to cause system aging-related failures.

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“…Algorithms such as first-fit, best-fit, segregated lists and buddy systems have been widely used in various programming environments and operating systems [55,56]. Comparison between such algorithms' time and space performance can be found in [72,55,56] as well. However, their time and space overheads are still too high for a real-time system [21].…”

Section: Manual Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Garbage Collection for Flexible Hard Real-Time Systems

Chang

Wellings

2010

IEEE Trans. Comput.

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Garbage collection is key to improving the productivity and code quality in virtually every computing system with dynamic memory requirements. It dramatically reduces the software complexity and consequently allows the programmers to concentrate on the real problems rather than struggling with memory management issues, which finally results in higher productivity. The code quality is also improved because the two most common memory related errors -dangling pointers and memory leaks -can be prevented (assuming that the garbage collectors are implemented correctly and the user programs are not malicious).However, real-time systems, particularly those with hard real-time requirements, always choose not to use garbage collection (or even dynamic memory) in order to avoid the unpredictable executions of garbage collectors as well as the chances of being blocked due to the lack of free memory. Much effort has been expended trying to build predictable garbage collectors which can provide both temporal and spatial guarantees. Unfortunately, most existing work leads to systems that cannot easily achieve a balance between temporal and spatial performance, although their worst-case behaviours in both dimensions can be predicted. Moreover, the real-time systems targeted by the existing real-time garbage collectors are not the state-ofthe-art ones. The scheduling of those garbage collectors has not been integrated into the modern real-time scheduling frameworks, which makes the benefits provided by those systems very difficult to obtain. This thesis argues that the aforementioned issues should be tackled by introducing new design criteria for real-time garbage collectors. The existing criteria are not enough to reflect the unique requirements of real-time systems. A new performance indicator is proposed to describe the capability of a real-time garbage collector to achieve better balance between temporal and spatial performance. Moreover, it is argued that new real-time garbage collectors should be integrated with the real-time task model and more advanced scheduling techniques should be adopted as well.A hybrid garbage collection algorithm, which combines both reference counting and mark-sweep, is designed according to the new design criteria. On the one hand, the reference counting component helps reduce the overall memory requirements. On the other hand, the mark-sweep component periodically identifies cyclic garbage, which cannot be found by the reference counting component. Both parts of the collector are executed by segregated tasks, which are released periodically as the hard real-time user tasks. In order to improve the performance of soft-or non-realtime tasks in our system while still guaranteeing the hard real-time requirements, the dual-priority scheduling algorithm is used for all the tasks including the GC tasks. A multi-heap approach is also proposed to bound the impacts of the softor non-real-time tasks on the overall memory usage as well as the executions of the GC tasks. More importantly, static ana...

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A comparison of memory allocators for real-time applications

Cited by 25 publications

References 15 publications

A Survey on Cache Management Mechanisms for Real-Time Embedded Systems

A Survey on Cache Management Mechanisms for Real-Time Embedded Systems

The mechanics of memory-related software aging

Garbage Collection for Flexible Hard Real-Time Systems

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