[extropy-chat] Optimal computer configurations

[Robert Bradbury]

On 5/3/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
> Allocate large blocks using the underlying system/libc calls.  Write
> alloc, free, etc. substitutes and any more specialized calls you might
> desire  that
> suballocate from these large blocks with sufficient additional
> bookkeeping, tagging and such to more efficiently clean up garbage and
> compact the heap.   This sort of thing has been written many times.  Its
> main drawback is the larger memory increment when the current large blocks
> cannot satisfy a request.   But with compacting of the heap large blocks
> themselves may be released if memory needs go down significantly enough.


I understand that Samantha.

It is a somewhat non-trivial problem because each type of memory (say
history records vs. large images vs. garbage collected memory
[Javascript???]) requires different memory management strategies.  There
seems to be 32+ types of *alloc() calls (png_malloc(), GC_malloc(),
JS_malloc(), etc.) in the source for Mozilla. I'm not sure what subset is
used by Firefox.  What I am seeing suggests that they knew this would be
useful but may not have yet taken steps to optimize it.

Robert
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