[fpc-devel] CMem allocator memory alignment experiment

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think there are several issues with the cmem memory allocator. The main
> issue that it "breaks" the underlying malloc() memory alignment, by adding
> a four/eight byte size value to the start of each block for the sole
> reason to be able to throw Runtime Error 204 in case someone tries to free
> a block with the wrong size.
> 
> At least on Linux, malloc() is documented to align to 64 bit on 32 bit and
> 128 bit on 64 bit platforms, while this way cmem's GetMem() reduces that
> to 4 bytes and 8 bytes, respectively.

Since cmem is intended for use by FPC, I don't see this as a serious 
issue unless somebody is exchanging malloc()ed blocks between Pascal and 
C code. However I'm not saying that it's not worth fixing.

> This causes multiple performance and other issues, especially on
> processors which require stricter alignment (most ARM CPUs, but also x86
> with SSE, etc).

I'm not sure to what extent this remains an issue with current ARM 
chips. I've got limited ARM hardware, but some tests that I did with 
somebody else a few months ago didn't show up any issues.

It's more of a problem with SPARC particularly on Linux, but that's 
rapidly going down the tubes as a viable platform- in part because this 
very issue breaks a lot of stuff and maintainers have neither hardware 
nor incentive to investigate.

Perhaps the most serious scenario is where an architecture or particular 
implementation requires alignment, but the kernel traps alignment errors 
and fixes them silently. SPARC Solaris does this and my understanding is 
that it introduces a very significant performance overhead; ARM Linux 
may also do it (where demanded by the hardware) but my understanding is 
that notifications can be enabled.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]