MiniMalloc

Memory allocation library similar to malloc, focused on low memory overhead, using a given memory block (e.g. an arena).

Usage examples

#include <mini_malloc.h>

#define BLOCKSIZE 1024

int main(void) {
    void* block = malloc(BLOCKSIZE);
    struct mini_malloc* mm = init_mini_malloc(block, BLOCKSIZE);
    void* foo = mm_alloc(mm, 32);
    mm_free(mm, foo);
    free(block);
    return 0;
}

Implementation details

The allocator is implemented to have low memory overhead (8 bytes per allocated block, 272 bytes static in addition). Allocations use one of 60 fixed memory sizes, divisible by 8 and increasing in size by a factor of pow(2.0, 0.25). Freed nodes are reinserted into the free memory pool, adjacent free nodes are joined. Allocation should be quite efficient, though no optimizations regarding cache locality or multi-threading were considered.

Limitations

• Each instance can only use a single, non-growing memory block.
• Multi-threading is not considered and must be handled by the library user.
• A realloc() function is not provided.

License

This repo is released under the BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE file for details.