Free list
In today's world, Free list has become a topic of great importance and interest to a wide spectrum of people. From academics and professionals from various fields to ordinary people, Free list has captured the attention of many and generated intense debate in society. In order to better understand this phenomenon, it is crucial to approach Free list from different perspectives and analyze its multiple implications. In this article, we will explore various aspects related to Free list and examine its impact in different contexts. Through this analysis, we hope to contribute to the understanding and reflection on Free list, as well as to the generation of ideas and proposals to address this issue effectively.
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (November 2021) |
A free list (or freelist) is a data structure used in a scheme for dynamic memory allocation. It operates by connecting unallocated regions of memory together in a linked list, using the first word of each unallocated region as a pointer to the next. It is most suitable for allocating from a memory pool, where all objects have the same size.
Free lists make the allocation and deallocation operations very simple. To free a region, one would just link it to the free list. To allocate a region, one would simply remove a single region from the end of the free list and use it. If the regions are variable-sized, one may have to search for a region of large enough size, which can be expensive.
Free lists have the disadvantage, inherited from linked lists, of poor locality of reference and so poor data cache utilization, and they do not automatically consolidate adjacent regions to fulfill allocation requests for large regions, unlike the buddy allocation system. Nevertheless, they are still useful in a variety of simple applications where a full-blown memory allocator is unnecessary or requires too much overhead.
The OCaml runtime uses free lists to satisfy allocation requests,[1] as does RosAlloc on Android Runtime.[2]
See also
References
- ^ Minsky, Yaron; Madhavapeddy, Anil (October 2022). "Understanding the Garbage Collector". Real World OCaml (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
- ^ "Debugging ART garbage collection". source.android.com. Archived from the original on 16 Feb 2023. Retrieved 16 Feb 2023.
Further reading
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