Simple (yet very efficient) multi-threaded memory allocator based on free lists.
It is best suited for applications doing a lot of small (<256B) memory allocations (as usually C++ stl containers do), and from many simultaneously running threads.
- O(1) cost for alloc, free (for blocks of size <56KB)
- Low fragmentation
- Near zero size overhead for small allocations (no header per allocation, just one common 64 bytes header for all blocks inside 64KB chunk)
- High efficiency and scalability for multi-threaded programs (almost lock-free, at maximum one spin-lock per 256 alloc/free calls for small allocations, even if all memory allocated in one thread then freed inside another thread)
To use ltalloc in your C++ application just add ltalloc.cc source file into your project's source files list. It overrides global operators new and delete, which is a fully C++ standard compliant way to replace almost all memory alocation routines in C++ applications (as stl container's default allocators call global operator new). But if this way is not well suilable for you, the other options of plug-in ltalloc into your application are exists as well. Actually, ltalloc.cc source is written in C (and overriding of operators new/delete is disabled automatically if __cplusplus is not defined), so it can be compiled both as C and C++ code.