Thread

Comparison of Malloc() Algorithms

144 points · 51 comments · egberts1

Nnnes · 1789629125 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260915165314/https://egbert.net/blog/articles/comparison-of-arena-architecture-in-malloc.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20260915165314/https://egbert.ne...
Funny SSL setup. Explanation from here <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133598">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133598
> Oh, certain browser will not work with this blog if it cannot negotiate ONLY for Cha-Cha/Poly. It's by design as a showcase of why that particular web browser refuses to do that.
I assume the "particular web browser" is Chromium, which won't load it on any OS I've tried. On Windows, Firefox and the built-in curl.exe also refuse to connect.
1. bom-d-van · 1789632270 · focus · HN ↗
  legend.
2. [deleted] · 1789633733 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
3. ncruces · 1789634357 · focus · HN ↗
  Thanks for the link.
  Article makes it look like nothing happened in the embed/low-memory/single-threaded malloc space in decades since Doug Lea's malloc.
  I just implemented TLSF for my minimal Wasm libc: fragmentation is just as good, performance is a lot more consistent (and on average better), for a significant reduction in code size.
  <a href="http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/index.html
  <a href="https://github.com/ncruces/wasm2go/blob/main/libc-gen/c/malloc_tlsf.c" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ncruces/wasm2go/blob/main/libc-gen/c/mall...
  1. egberts1 · 1789644949 · focus · HN ↗
    A great idea for another article. A focus, on embedded and malloc()
    I do do have a malloc() benchmark but it is in bad shape and directories have not coalesce nicely yet, tor a single run or a menu-driven one.
  2. thomasmg · 1789660229 · focus · HN ↗
    Interesting! I have also implemented a version of TLSF for my (currently single-threaded) programming language. I also found it to be good for my use case (embedded / minimal code size). I'll compare it against yours. One improvement I did is some kind of preallocation for small blocks. <a href="https://github.com/thomasmueller/bau-lang/blob/main/src/main/java/org/bau/parser/StandardLib.java#L9" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/thomasmueller/bau-lang/blob/main/src/main...
4. egberts1 · 1789646164 · focus · HN ↗
  It keeps certain web scrapers and inline transparent proxies/IDS/XNS from fetching, 100%
  Certain browsers will suffer. Meh.
5. quietbritishjim · 1789650468 · focus · HN ↗
  Firefox on Windows user here, and it loads the blog fine. I don't have Chrome installed but Edge (which is Chromium engine based) doesn't load it.
6. dark-star · 1789715840 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't get what this is supposed to prove. That my browser doesn't allow websites to declare what encryption they use? I am pretty sure there's a point to all of this, but please let me (and my browser) choose which encryptions I want to trust.
  Is this a spec violation or something?
  1. gspr · 1789757849 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't the idea that the server and client should agree on a common subset? Here, the server's subset is very small, but not esoteric – so then surely it's the client that's lacking in features?
    egberts1 · 1789845755 · focus · HN ↗
    Precisely.
    Fix the browser.
    dark-star · 1789847604 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah but I don't want Chachacha, I prefer AES. If you can't do AES, I'm not interested in the website :)

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.