In the Before Times, the vast majority of software was written in garbage collected language where a working knowledge of the relative merits of C memory allocators is not useful or particularly relevant.
Why would the scads of people writing JavaScript, Java, python, go, rails, etc need to be aware of jemalloc?
Memory allocation behaviour has visible impact also for users of managed languages, and the behaviour of software for end users.
In our Python program, a bit of numpy processing of large pictures led to 100 GB not being returned to the OS by glibc's default allocator and the machine running out of memory shortly after. With jemalloc's reliable memory return settings, those problems disappear.
ZenoArrow · · focus · HN ↗
baq · · focus · HN ↗
stackghost · · focus · HN ↗
Why would the scads of people writing JavaScript, Java, python, go, rails, etc need to be aware of jemalloc?
nh2 · · focus · HN ↗
In our Python program, a bit of numpy processing of large pictures led to 100 GB not being returned to the OS by glibc's default allocator and the machine running out of memory shortly after. With jemalloc's reliable memory return settings, those problems disappear.
stackghost · · focus · HN ↗
The number of programmers who are in positions to care about jemalloc vs other malloc is minuscule