malloc() not the one-size-fits-all allocator

malloc() is extremely convenient because it is generic. It does not make any assumptions about the context of the allocation and the deallocation. Such allocators may just follow each other, or be separated by a whole job execution. They may take place in the same thread, or not… Since it is generic, each allocation is different from each other, meaning that long term allocations share the same pool as short term ones.

Developer point of view

In the previous articles we dealt with memory classification and analysis from an outer point of view. We saw that memory can be allocated in different ways with various properties. In the remaining articles of the series we will take a developer point of view.

At Intersec we write all of our software in C, which means that we are constantly dealing with memory management. We want our developers to have a solid knowledge of the various existing memory pools. In this article we will have an overview of the main sources of memory available to C programmers on Linux. We will also see some rules of memory management that will help you keep your program correct and efficient.