226 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
226 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
.\"
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.\" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.\" "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
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.\" <phk@login.dknet.dk> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
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.\" can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
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.\" this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Poul-Henning Kamp
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.\" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.\"
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.\" $Id$
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.\"
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.ds RH Implementation
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.NH
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Implementation
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.PP
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A new malloc(3) implementation was written to meet the goals,
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and to the extent possible to address the shortcomings listed previously.
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.PP
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The source is 1218 lines of C code, and can be found in FreeBSD 2.2
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(and probably later versions as well) as src/lib/libc/stdlib/malloc.c.
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.PP
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The main data structure is the
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.I page-directory
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which contains a
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.B void*
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for each page we have control over.
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The value can be one of:
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.IP
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.B MALLOC_NOT_MINE
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Another part of the code may call brk(2) to get a piece of the cake.
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Consequently, we cannot rely on the memory we get from the kernel
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being one consecutive piece of memory, and therefore we need a way to
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mark such pages as "untouchable".
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.IP
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.B MALLOC_FREE
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This is a free page.
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.IP
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.B MALLOC_FIRST
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This is the first page in a (multi-)page allocation.
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.IP
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.B MALLOC_FOLLOW
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This is a subsequent page in a multi-page allocation.
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.IP
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.B
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struct pginfo*
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.R
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A pointer to a structure describing a partitioned page.
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.PP
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In addition, there exists a linked list of small data structures that
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describe the free space as runs of free pages.
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.PP
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Notice that these structures are not part of the free pages themselves,
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but rather allocated with malloc so that the free pages themselves
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are never referenced while they are free.
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.PP
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When a request for storage comes in, it will be treated as a ``page''
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allocation if it is bigger than half a page.
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The free list will be searched and the first run of free pages that
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can satisfy the request is used. The first page gets set to
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.B MALLOC_FIRST
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status. If more than that one page is needed, the rest of them get
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.B MALLOC_FOLLOW
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status in the page-directory.
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.PP
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If there were no pages on the free list, brk(2) will be called, and
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the pages will get added to the page-directory with status
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.B MALLOC_FREE
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and the search restarts.
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.PP
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Freeing a number of pages is done by changing their state in the
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page directory to MALLOC_FREE, and then traversing the free-pages list to
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find the right place for this run of pages, possibly collapsing
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with the two neighbouring runs into one run and, if possible,
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releasing some memory back to the kernel by calling brk(2).
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.PP
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If the request is less than or equal to half of a page, its size will be
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rounded up to the nearest power of two before being processed
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and if the request is less than some minimum size, it is rounded up to
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that size.
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.PP
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These sub-page allocations are served from pages which are split up
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into some number of equal size chunks.
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For each of these pages a
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.B
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struct pginfo
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.R
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describes the size of the chunks on this page, how many there are,
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how many are free and so on.
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The description consist of a bitmap of used chunks, and various counters
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and numbers used to keep track of the stuff in the page.
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.PP
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For each size of sub-page allocation, the pginfo structures for the
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pages that have free chunks in them form a list.
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The heads of these lists are stored in predetermined slots at
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the beginning of the page directory to make access fast.
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.PP
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To allocate a chunk of some size, the head of the list for the
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corresponding size is examined, and a free chunk found. The number
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of free chunks on that page is decreased by one and, if zero, the
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pginfo structure is unlinked from the list.
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.PP
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To free a chunk, the page is derived from the pointer, the page table
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for that page contains a pointer to the pginfo structure, where the
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free bit is set for the chunk, the number of free chunks increased by
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one, and if equal to one, the pginfo structure is linked into the
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proper place on the list for this size of chunks.
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If the count increases to match the number of chunks on the page, the
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pginfo structure is unlinked from the list and free(3)'ed and the
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actual page itself is free(3)'ed too.
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.PP
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To be 100% correct performance-wise these lists should be ordered
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according to the recent number of accesses to that page. This
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information is not available and it would essentially mean a reordering
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of the list on every memory reference to keep it up-to-date.
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Instead they are ordered according to the address of the pages.
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Interestingly enough, in practice this comes out to almost the same
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thing performance wise.
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.PP
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It's not that surprising after all, it's the difference between
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following the crowd or actively directing where it can go, in both
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ways you can end up in the middle of it all.
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.PP
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The side effect of this compromise is that it also uses less storage,
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and the list never has to be reordered, all the ordering happens when
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pages are added or deleted.
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.PP
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It is an interesting twist to the implementation that the
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.B
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struct pginfo
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.R
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Is allocated with malloc.
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That is, "as with malloc" to be painfully correct.
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The code knows the special case where the first (couple) of allocations on
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the page is actually the pginfo structure and deals with it accordingly.
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This avoids some silly "chicken and egg" issues.
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.ds RH Bells and whistles.
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.NH
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Bells and whistles.
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.PP
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brk(2) is actually not a very fast system call when you ask for storage.
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This is mainly because of the need by the kernel to zero the pages before
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handing them over, so therefore this implementation does not release
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heap pages until there is a large chunk to release back to the kernel.
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Chances are pretty good that we will need it again pretty soon anyway.
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Since these pages are not accessed at all, they will soon be paged out
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and don't affect anything but swap-space usage.
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.PP
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The page directory is actually kept in a mmap(2)'ed piece of
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anonymous memory. This avoids some rather silly cases that
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would otherwise have to be handled when the page directory
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has to be extended.
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.PP
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One particularly nice feature is that all pointers passed to free(3)
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and realloc(3) can be checked conclusively for validity:
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First the pointer is masked to find the page. The page directory
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is then examined, it must contain either MALLOC_FIRST, in which
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case the pointer must point exactly at the page, or it can contain
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a struct pginfo*, in which case the pointer must point to one of
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the chunks described by that structure.
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Warnings will be printed on
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.B stderr
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and nothing will be done with
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the pointer if it is found to be invalid.
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.PP
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An environment variable
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.B MALLOC_OPTIONS
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allows the user some control over the behaviour of malloc.
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Some of the more interesting options are:
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.IP
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.B Abort
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If malloc fails to allocate storage, core-dump the process with
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a message rather than expect it handle this correctly.
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It's amazing how few programs actually handle this condition correctly,
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and consequently the havoc they can create is the more creative or
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destructive.
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.IP
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.B Dump
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Writes malloc statistics to a file called ``malloc.out'' prior
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to process termination.
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.IP
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.B Hint
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Pass a hint to the kernel about pages we no longer need through the
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madvise(2) system call. This can help performance on machines that
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page heavily by eliminating unnecessary page-ins and page-outs of
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unused data.
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.IP
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.B Realloc
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Always do a free and malloc when realloc(3) is called.
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For programs doing garbage collection using realloc(3), this make the
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heap collapse faster since malloc will reallocate from the
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lowest available address.
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The default
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is to leave things alone if the size of the allocation is still in
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the same size-class.
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.IP
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.B Junk
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will explicitly fill the allocated area with a particular value
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to try to detect if programs rely on it being zero.
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.IP
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.B Zero
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will explicitly zero out the allocated chunk of memory, while any
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space after the allocation in the chunk will be filled with the
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junk value to try to catch out of the chunk references.
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.ds RH The road not taken.
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.NH
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The road not yet taken.
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.PP
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A couple of avenues were explored that could be interesting in some
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set of circumstances.
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.PP
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Using mmap(2) instead of brk(2) was actually slower, since brk(2)
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knows a lot of the things that mmap has to find out first.
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.PP
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In general there is little room for further improvement of the
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time-overhead of the malloc, further improvements will have to
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be in the area of improving paging behaviour.
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.PP
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It is still under consideration to add a feature such that
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if realloc is called with two zero arguments, the internal
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allocations will be reallocated to perform a garbage collect.
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This could be used in certain types of programs to collapse
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the memory use, but so far it doesn't seem to be worth the effort.
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.PP
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Malloc/Free can be a significant point of contention in multi-threaded
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programs. Low-grain locking of the data-structures inside the
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implementation should be implemented to avoid excessive spin-waiting.
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