Re: Memory fragmentation?

[email protected] wrote:
>> I don't think this would be the best general purpose solution.  Most
>> large allocations (think image size allocations) end up outside of the
>> main heap area by most allocators already.  We can do something like
>> this in smaller areas, but I think us getting a better understanding
>> of lifetimes of grouped objects that we can pool together and free
>> together will result in much bigger wins.  We also need to simply
>> reduce the number of allocations.
> 
> OK, thanks Stuart.  We had a separate discussion about this on IRC.
> Some thoughts for those following along at home.  Our very smart
> friend Zach Brown pointed out to us that the right way to think about
> these allocations is to not think about them in terms of size, but
> instead think of them in terms of lifetime.  Stuart eludes to that but
> doesn't call it out specifically.  I thought it was worth mentioning
> so that people will think about it differently.

So what happen in current Mozilla builds when the 'lifetime' is over? 
Will this memory be available for re-allocation?  Will is be re-used, or 
not?  I guess not.  I don't think that it works like this, but I thought 
it was worth to give it a shot to learn/understand what is going on 
right now.

-- 
Michael Vincent van Rantwijk
- MultiZilla Project Team Lead
- XUL Boot Camp Staff member (ActiveState Training Partner)
- iPhone Application Developer