A Page-based Hybrid (Software-Hardware) Dynamic Memory Allocator

Modern programming languages often include complex mechanisms for dynamic memory allocation and garbage collection. These features drive the need for more efficient implementation of memory management functions, both in terms of memory usage and execution performance. In this paper, we introduce a software and hardware codesign to improve the speed of the software allocator used in Free-BSD systems. The hardware complexity of our design is independent of the dynamic memory size, thus making the allocator suitable for any memory size. Our design improves the performance of memory management intensive benchmarks by as much as 43%. To our knowledge, this is the first-ever work of this kind, introducing "hybrid memory allocator".

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: CAL
• Authors: Wentong Li, Saraju P. Mohanty, Krishna M. Kavi
• Keywords: CAL 2006, CAL 2008, Dynamic Memory, Dynamic Memory Allocation, Memory Management