Re: memory management

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 03:57:59AM -0700, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 10:56:47PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > 2) We use malloc(3) to allocate the PARI stack on the heap. In fact 
> > we do not have much choice, since PARI/GP is a library. Allocating
> > memory without malloc would forbid programs linked with libpari to use
> > malloc() which is not acceptable. This would be a real pain for GP
> > already.
> 
> I do not know what over ways of memory allocation do you mean here.
> It is either malloc()/sbrk(), or memory-map.  Both do not allow a
> growth, AFAIK.

You can use sbrk() directly. If you use a single sbrk()ed memory bloc
you can grow it. GAP use that, AFAIK. Of course, this forbid the use
of malloc() in the code.

> IMO, the main drawback of the PARI stack model is that the data is
> constantly shuffled in memory.  If a function call tree is deep (e.g.,
> your data type tree is deep), the data is memmov()ed many many times.
> BTW, the same holds for the heap allocation - since the heap objects
> are not refcounted, one cannot be just "referenced" from another - it
> needs to be copied there.  [The last part is easy to fix with t_EXT,
> though.]

I agree that something that having one stack per functions could be
better performance wise. Something like obstack could help.

Cheers,
Bill.