A customisable memory management framework for C++

Abstract

SUMMARYAutomatic garbage collection relieves programmers from the burden of managing memory themselves and several techniques have been developed that make garbage collection feasible in many situations, including real time applications or within traditional programming languages. However, optimal performance cannot always be achieved by a uniform general purpose solution. Sometimes an algorithm exhibits a predictable pattern of memory usage that could be better handled specifically, delaying as much as possible the intervention of the general purpose collector. This leads to the requirement for algorithm specific customisation of the collector strategies. We present a dynamic memory management framework which can be customised to the needs of an algorithm, while preserving the convenience of automatic collection in the normal case. The Customisable Memory Manager (CMM) organises memory in multiple heaps. Each heap is an instance of C؉؉ class which abstracts and encapsulates a particular storage discipline. The default heap for collectable objects uses the technique of mostly copying garbage collection, providing good performance and memory compaction. Customisation of the collector is achieved exploiting object orientation by defining specialised versions of the collector methods for each heap class. The object-oriented interface to the collector enables coexistence and coordination among the various collectors as well as integration with traditional code unaware of garbage collection. The CMM is implemented in C؉؉ without any special support in the language or the compiler. The techniques used in the CMM are general enough to be applicable also to other languages. The performance of the CMM is analysed and compared to other conservative collectors for C/C؉؉ in various configurations.

Reducing memory fragmentation in network applications with dynamic memory allocators optimized for performance

“…Also, in [14], the abstraction level of customizable memory allocators has been extended to C++. Additionally, the authors of [8] propose an infrastructure of C++ layers that can be used to improve performance of general-purpose allocators.…”

“…This results in mediocre performance and increased fragmentation. Therefore, custom DM allocators are needed [8,14] to achieve better results. Note that they are still realized in the middleware and usually not in the hardware.…”

Modular Construction and Power Modelling of Dynamic Memory Managers for Embedded Systems

“…In [1], a C++ framework where you can partially redefine some functionality (e.g. malloc() function) of the DM subsystem has been proposed, but it does not consider changes in the implementation structure of DM managers.…”

“…and later on add detailed profiling for each of these basic structures. In conventional approaches [1,2,15] this kind of modeling and detailed profiling of basic structures of DM managers is not possible. The main reason is that in such approaches the DM managers are built as complex software engineering modules where all the different components (e.g.…”

Reducing Memory Fragmentation with Performance-Optimized Dynamic Memory Allocators in Network Applications

“…This results in mediocre performance and increased fragmentation. Therefore, custom DM allocators are needed [7,12] to achieve better results. Note that they are still realized in the middleware and usually not in the hardware.…”