On segunda-feira, 20 de agosto de 2012 07.56.36, Jason H wrote: > In comparing technologies (Qt vs .NET) one of the biggest architectural > differences is the garbage collection model. > > > Qt uses the standard C++ new/free, where .NET uses a garbage collector. > Interestingly the GC not only manages overall usage, but can move objects > around in memory. This is the prupose fo the ^ operator in their C++/CLI - > it's a memory handle that is used to reference an object instead of a > pointer, because the GC can change the address. > > In the entirety of my computing experience I have never seen a malloc or new > fail because of memory fragmentation. Is this some low-level MS FUD?
No. It's a non-theoretical situation. It can happen.
Take, for example, a 32-bit application running on a 32-bit Linux. It has 3 GB
of addressing space. Since it's using some of it when it starts up, it has
less than 3 GB available for use.
Try this:
malloc(1 GB);
malloc(100 MB);
free(the 1 GB block)
malloc(2 GB);
There's a big chance it will fail, even though there's still roughly 2.8 GB of
addressing space available.
The above is, of course, an academic exercise. If your application is going to
use blocks in the order of gigabytes, you should be using 64-bit.
In a real-world case, memory fragmentation usually influences the total memory
usage of an application. Even if large chunks of memory are freed, they can't
be returned to the operating system because the application is still using
blocks further down the heap. Also, it might increase its consumption if it
does operations like:
ptr1 = malloc(BIG);
ptr2 = malloc(SMALL);
free(ptr1);
ptr3 = malloc(SMALL);
ptr4 = malloc(BIG);
free(ptr2);
free(ptr3);
return ptr4;
In a zero-overhead allocator, ptr1 = ptr2 + BIG and ptr3 = ptr1. That means
the room between ptr3 and ptr1 is only BIG - SMALL, which isn't big enough to
satisfy the fourth malloc. That code above will extend the heap by at least
2*BIG + SMALL, even though it only had BIG + 2*SMALL amount of memory
allocated at any given time.
E.g., for BIG = 65536 (64k) and SMALL = 16, the heap was extended by at least
128k + 16 bytes, even though the function actually allocated only 64k + 32
bytes.
If that operation is repeated in a loop, the heap might grow a lot. This is
known to happen under certain circumstances for Qt, for example: memory
allocations for QStrings, QByteArrays and QEvents, though small, happen quite
often.
--
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
Intel Sweden AB - Registration Number: 556189-6027
Knarrarnäsgatan 15, 164 40 Kista, Stockholm, Sweden
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
_______________________________________________ Interest mailing list Interest@qt-project.org http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
