source: doc/theses/mubeen_zulfiqar_MMath/intro.tex @ 3b0bc16

ADTast-experimentalenumforall-pointer-decaypthread-emulationqualifiedEnum
Last change on this file since 3b0bc16 was 15885de9, checked in by m3zulfiq <m3zulfiq@…>, 3 years ago

removed errors from thesis and separated background chapter

  • Property mode set to 100644
File size: 3.0 KB
Line 
1\chapter{Introduction}
2
3\noindent
4====================
5
6Writing Points:
7\begin{itemize}
8\item
9Introduce dynamic memory allocation with brief background.
10\item
11Scope of the thesis.
12\item
13Importance of memory allocation and micro-benchmark suite.
14\item
15Research problem.
16\item
17Research objectives.
18\item
19The vision behind cfa-malloc.
20\item
21An outline of the thesis.
22\end{itemize}
23
24\noindent
25====================
26
27\section{Introduction}
28Dynamic memory allocation and management is one of the core features of C. It gives programmer the freedom to allocate, free, use, and manage dynamic memory himself. The programmer is not given the complete control of the dynamic memory management instead an interface of memory allocator is given to the progrmmer that can be used to allocate/free dynamic memory for the application's use.
29
30Memory allocator is a layer between thr programmer and the system. Allocator gets dynamic memory from the system in heap/mmap area of application storage and manages it for programmer's use.
31
32GNU C Library (FIX ME: cite this) provides an interchangeable memory allocator that can be replaced with a custom memory allocator that supports required features and fulfills application's custom needs. It also allows others to innovate in memory allocation and design their own memory allocator. GNU C Library has set guidelines that should be followed when designing a standalone memory allocator. GNU C Library requires new memory allocators to have atlease following set of functions in their allocator's interface:
33
34\begin{itemize}
35\item
36malloc: it allocates and returns a chunk of dynamic memory of requested size (FIX ME: cite man page).
37\item
38calloc: it allocates and returns an array in dynamic memory of requested size (FIX ME: cite man page).
39\item
40realloc: it reallocates and returns an already allocated chunk of dynamic memory to a new size (FIX ME: cite man page).
41\item
42free: it frees an already allocated piece of dynamic memory (FIX ME: cite man page).
43\end{itemize}
44
45In addition to the above functions, GNU C Library also provides some more functions to increase the usability of the dynamic memory allocator. Most standalone allocators also provide all or some of the above additional functions.
46
47\begin{itemize}
48\item
49aligned\_alloc
50\item
51malloc\_usable\_size
52\item
53memalign
54\item
55posix\_memalign
56\item
57pvalloc
58\item
59valloc
60\end{itemize}
61
62With the rise of concurrent applications, memory allocators should be able to fulfill dynamic memory requests from multiple threads in parallel without causing contention on shared resources. There needs to be a set of a standard benchmarks that can be used to evaluate an allocator's performance in different scenerios.
63
64\section{Research Objectives}
65Our research objective in this thesis is to:
66
67\begin{itemize}
68\item
69Design a lightweight concurrent memory allocator with added features and usability that are currently not present in the other memory allocators.
70\item
71Design a suite of benchmarks to evalute multiple aspects of a memory allocator.
72\end{itemize}
73
74\section{An outline of the thesis}
75LAST FIX ME: add outline at the end
Note: See TracBrowser for help on using the repository browser.