Continuing from where we left of last time, I would like to discuss how we can build growing allocators using a virtual memory system. This post describes how to build a stack-like allocator that can automatically grow up to a given maximum size.
Before we can delve into the inner workings of growing allocators, I would like to explain the concept of virtual memory and discuss what it is, why it is needed, and what we can use it for.
As promised last time, today we will see how pool allocators can help with allocating/freeing allocations of a certain size, in any order, in O(1) time.
Last time, we were looking at a linear allocator, probably the simplest of all memory allocators. This time, we will detail how to implement a non-growing stack-like allocator, along with conventional use-cases.
During the next few weeks, I’d like to detail how the memory allocators inside Molecule work, starting with a simple, non-growing linear allocator today in order to cover some base first.
This is the final installment in a series of posts about Molecule’s memory system. Today, we are going to look at the final piece of the puzzle, glueing together different things like raw memory allocation, bounds checking, memory tracking, and more.
In the last few installments of the Memory system series, we were mostly concerned with how ordinary memory allocation using new and delete works internally, and how we can build our own tools to provide additional functionality. One thing we haven’t discussed yet are the memory arenas which are responsible for actually allocating memory, while providing additional things like bounds checking, memory tracking, etc.
