Re: [RFC] My research agenda for 2.7

Daniel Phillips
2003-06-27T15:17:01Z

On Friday 27 June 2003 17:04, Martin J. Bligh wrote:
> Daniel Phillips <phillips@arcor.de> wrote (on Friday, June 27, 2003
> > Some allocation strategies may be statistically more
> > resistiant to fragmentation than others, but no allocator has been
> > invented, or ever will be, that can guarantee that terminal fragmentation
> > will never occur - only active defragmentation can provide such a
> > guarantee.
>
> Whilst I agree with that in principle, it's inevitably expensive. Thus
> whilst we may need to have that code, we should try to avoid using it ;-)

That's exactly the idea. Active defragmentation is just a fallback to handle
currently-unhandled corner cases. A good, efficient allocator that resists
fragmentation in the first place is still needed.

Regards,

Daniel