| commit | 051cee51f03d8a6d0ef6e69b67d5e10ec2704022 | [log] [tgz] |
|---|---|---|
| author | Steve Yen <steve.yen@gmail.com> | Fri Jun 26 18:27:45 2015 |
| committer | Steve Yen <steve.yen@gmail.com> | Fri Jun 26 18:27:45 2015 |
| tree | 5185e94dae9f2f447adf55679ecbb56fc7415c4f | |
| parent | ce6ed78c340f2705b5ed26cde4cba3d805682496 [diff] |
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A slab allocator library in the Go Programming Language.
This library may be interesting to you if you wish to reduce garbage collection (e.g. stop-the-world GC) performance issues in your golang programs, allowing you to switch to explicit byte array memory management techniques.
This can be useful, for example, for long-running server programs that manage lots of in-memory data items, such as caches and databases.
arena := NewArena(48, // The smallest slab class "chunk size" is 48 bytes.
1024*1024, // Each slab will be 1MB in size.
2, // Power of 2 growth in "chunk sizes".
nil) // Use default make([]byte) for slab memory.
var buf []byte
buf = arena.Alloc(64) // Allocate 64 bytes.
... use the buf ...
arena.DecRef(buf) // Release our ref-count when we're done with buf.
buf = arena.Alloc(1024) // Allocate another 1K byte array.
... use the buf ...
arena.AddRef(buf) // The buf's ref-count now goes to 2.
... use the buf some more ...
arena.DecRef(buf)
... still can use the buf since we still have 1 ref-count ...
arena.DecRef(buf) // We shouldn't use the buf after this last DecRef(),
// as the library might recycle it for a future Alloc().
The byte arrays ([]byte) that are allocated by this library are reference-counted. When a byte array's reference count drops to 0, it will be placed onto a free-list for later re-use. This can reduce the need to ask the go runtime to allocate new memory and perhaps delay the need for a full stop-the-world GC.
The AddRef()/DecRef() functions use slice/capacity math instead of “large” additional tracking data structures (e.g., no extra hashtables) in order to reach the right ref-counter metadata.
This implementation also does not use any of go's “unsafe” capabilities, allowing it to remain relatively simple.
Memory is managed via a simple slab allocator algorithm. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_allocation
Each arena tracks one or more slabClass structs. Each slabClass manages a different “chunk size”, where chunk sizes are computed using a simple “growth factor” (e.g., the “power of 2 growth” in the above example). Each slabClass also tracks zero or more slabs, where every slab tracked by a slabClass will all have the same chunk size. A slab manages a (usually large) continguous array of memory bytes (1MB from the above example), and the slab‘s memory is subdivided into many chunks of the same chunk size. All the chunks in a new slab are placed on a free-list that’s part of the slabClass.
When Alloc() is invoked, the first “large enough” slabClass is found, and a chunk from the free-list is taken to service the allocation. If there are no more free chunks available in a slabClass, then a new slab (e.g., 1MB) is allocated, chunk'ified, and the request is processed as before.
The Arena returned from NewArena() is not concurrency safe. Please use your own locking.
The []byte buf's can be chained via the SetNext()/GetNext() functions. This may be useful for developers wishing to reduce fragmentation when they have wildly varying byte array sizes.
For example, a server cache may need to manage many items whose sizes range from small to large (16 bytes to 1MB). Instead of invoking Arena.Alloc() on the exact item size, the developer may wish to consider slicing an item into many more smaller 4KB byte arrays.
For a 1MB item, for example, the application can instead invoke Arena.Alloc(4096) for 256 times and use the Arena.SetNext() function to chain those smaller 4KB buffers together. By slicing memory into uniform-sized, smaller-sized buffers, there may be less fragmentation and better overall re-use of slabs. Additionally, the last []byte buffer in the chain may be smaller than 4KB to not waste space.
The NewArena() function takes an optional malloc() callback function, which will be invoked whenever the arena needs more memory for a new slab. If the malloc() func is nil, the arena will default to using the builtin make([]byte, sizeNeeded).
An application-specific malloc() func can be useful for tracking and/or limiting the amount of slab memory that an Arena uses. It can be also used by advanced applications to supply mmap()'ed memory to an Arena.
Apache 2 license.
Unit test code coverage, as of version 0.0.0-42-g60296ca, is 99.4%.