diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'source/luametatex/source/libraries/mimalloc/readme.md')
-rw-r--r-- | source/luametatex/source/libraries/mimalloc/readme.md | 716 |
1 files changed, 716 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/source/luametatex/source/libraries/mimalloc/readme.md b/source/luametatex/source/libraries/mimalloc/readme.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..6142dbc5e --- /dev/null +++ b/source/luametatex/source/libraries/mimalloc/readme.md @@ -0,0 +1,716 @@ + +<img align="left" width="100" height="100" src="doc/mimalloc-logo.png"/> + +[<img align="right" src="https://dev.azure.com/Daan0324/mimalloc/_apis/build/status/microsoft.mimalloc?branchName=dev"/>](https://dev.azure.com/Daan0324/mimalloc/_build?definitionId=1&_a=summary) + +# mimalloc + + + +mimalloc (pronounced "me-malloc") +is a general purpose allocator with excellent [performance](#performance) characteristics. +Initially developed by Daan Leijen for the run-time systems of the +[Koka](https://koka-lang.github.io) and [Lean](https://github.com/leanprover/lean) languages. + +Latest release tag: `v2.0.6` (2022-04-14). +Latest stable tag: `v1.7.6` (2022-02-14). + +mimalloc is a drop-in replacement for `malloc` and can be used in other programs +without code changes, for example, on dynamically linked ELF-based systems (Linux, BSD, etc.) you can use it as: +``` +> LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libmimalloc.so myprogram +``` +It also has an easy way to override the default allocator in [Windows](#override_on_windows). Notable aspects of the design include: + +- __small and consistent__: the library is about 8k LOC using simple and + consistent data structures. This makes it very suitable + to integrate and adapt in other projects. For runtime systems it + provides hooks for a monotonic _heartbeat_ and deferred freeing (for + bounded worst-case times with reference counting). +- __free list sharding__: instead of one big free list (per size class) we have + many smaller lists per "mimalloc page" which reduces fragmentation and + increases locality -- + things that are allocated close in time get allocated close in memory. + (A mimalloc page contains blocks of one size class and is usually 64KiB on a 64-bit system). +- __free list multi-sharding__: the big idea! Not only do we shard the free list + per mimalloc page, but for each page we have multiple free lists. In particular, there + is one list for thread-local `free` operations, and another one for concurrent `free` + operations. Free-ing from another thread can now be a single CAS without needing + sophisticated coordination between threads. Since there will be + thousands of separate free lists, contention is naturally distributed over the heap, + and the chance of contending on a single location will be low -- this is quite + similar to randomized algorithms like skip lists where adding + a random oracle removes the need for a more complex algorithm. +- __eager page reset__: when a "page" becomes empty (with increased chance + due to free list sharding) the memory is marked to the OS as unused ("reset" or "purged") + reducing (real) memory pressure and fragmentation, especially in long running + programs. +- __secure__: _mimalloc_ can be built in secure mode, adding guard pages, + randomized allocation, encrypted free lists, etc. to protect against various + heap vulnerabilities. The performance penalty is usually around 10% on average + over our benchmarks. +- __first-class heaps__: efficiently create and use multiple heaps to allocate across different regions. + A heap can be destroyed at once instead of deallocating each object separately. +- __bounded__: it does not suffer from _blowup_ \[1\], has bounded worst-case allocation + times (_wcat_), bounded space overhead (~0.2% meta-data, with low internal fragmentation), + and has no internal points of contention using only atomic operations. +- __fast__: In our benchmarks (see [below](#performance)), + _mimalloc_ outperforms other leading allocators (_jemalloc_, _tcmalloc_, _Hoard_, etc), + and often uses less memory. A nice property + is that it does consistently well over a wide range of benchmarks. There is also good huge OS page + support for larger server programs. + +The [documentation](https://microsoft.github.io/mimalloc) gives a full overview of the API. +You can read more on the design of _mimalloc_ in the [technical report](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/mimalloc-free-list-sharding-in-action) which also has detailed benchmark results. + +Enjoy! + +### Branches + +* `master`: latest stable release (based on `dev-slice`). +* `dev`: development branch for mimalloc v1. Use this branch for submitting PR's. +* `dev-slice`: development branch for mimalloc v2. This branch is downstream of `dev`. + +### Releases + +Note: the `v2.x` version has a new algorithm for managing internal mimalloc pages that tends to use reduce memory usage + and fragmentation compared to mimalloc `v1.x` (especially for large workloads). Should otherwise have similar performance + (see [below](#performance)); please report if you observe any significant performance regression. + +* 2022-04-14, `v1.7.6`, `v2.0.6`: fix fallback path for aligned OS allocation on Windows, improve Windows aligned allocation + even when compiling with older SDK's, fix dynamic overriding on macOS Monterey, fix MSVC C++ dynamic overriding, fix + warnings under Clang 14, improve performance if many OS threads are created and destroyed, fix statistics for large object + allocations, using MIMALLOC_VERBOSE=1 has no maximum on the number of error messages, various small fixes. + +* 2022-02-14, `v1.7.5`, `v2.0.5` (alpha): fix malloc override on + Windows 11, fix compilation with musl, potentially reduced + committed memory, add `bin/minject` for Windows, + improved wasm support, faster aligned allocation, + various small fixes. + +* 2021-11-14, `v1.7.3`, `v2.0.3` (beta): improved WASM support, improved macOS support and performance (including + M1), improved performance for v2 for large objects, Python integration improvements, more standard + installation directories, various small fixes. + +* 2021-06-17, `v1.7.2`, `v2.0.2` (beta): support M1, better installation layout on Linux, fix + thread_id on Android, prefer 2-6TiB area for aligned allocation to work better on pre-windows 8, various small fixes. + +* 2021-04-06, `v1.7.1`, `v2.0.1` (beta): fix bug in arena allocation for huge pages, improved aslr on large allocations, initial M1 support (still experimental). + +* 2021-01-31, `v2.0.0`: beta release 2.0: new slice algorithm for managing internal mimalloc pages. + +* 2021-01-31, `v1.7.0`: stable release 1.7: support explicit user provided memory regions, more precise statistics, + improve macOS overriding, initial support for Apple M1, improved DragonFly support, faster memcpy on Windows, various small fixes. + +* [Older release notes](#older-release-notes) + +Special thanks to: + +* [David Carlier](https://devnexen.blogspot.com/) (@devnexen) for his many contributions, and making + mimalloc work better on many less common operating systems, like Haiku, Dragonfly, etc. +* Mary Feofanova (@mary3000), Evgeniy Moiseenko, and Manuel Pöter (@mpoeter) for making mimalloc TSAN checkable, and finding + memory model bugs using the [genMC] model checker. +* Weipeng Liu (@pongba), Zhuowei Li, Junhua Wang, and Jakub Szymanski, for their early support of mimalloc and deployment + at large scale services, leading to many improvements in the mimalloc algorithms for large workloads. +* Jason Gibson (@jasongibson) for exhaustive testing on large scale workloads and server environments, and finding complex bugs + in (early versions of) `mimalloc`. +* Manuel Pöter (@mpoeter) and Sam Gross(@colesbury) for finding an ABA concurrency issue in abandoned segment reclamation. Sam also created the [no GIL](https://github.com/colesbury/nogil) Python fork which + uses mimalloc internally. + + +[genMC]: https://plv.mpi-sws.org/genmc/ + +### Usage + +mimalloc is used in various large scale low-latency services and programs, for example: + +<a href="https://www.bing.com"><img height="50" align="left" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Bing_logo.svg"></a> +<a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/"><img height="50" align="left" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Microsoft_Azure_Logo.svg"></a> +<a href="https://deathstrandingpc.505games.com"><img height="100" src="doc/ds-logo.png"></a> +<a href="https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/WhatsNew/Builds/ReleaseNotes/4_25/"><img height="100" src="doc/unreal-logo.svg"></a> +<a href="https://cab.spbu.ru/software/spades/"><img height="100" src="doc/spades-logo.png"></a> + + +# Building + +## Windows + +Open `ide/vs2019/mimalloc.sln` in Visual Studio 2019 and build. +The `mimalloc` project builds a static library (in `out/msvc-x64`), while the +`mimalloc-override` project builds a DLL for overriding malloc +in the entire program. + +## macOS, Linux, BSD, etc. + +We use [`cmake`](https://cmake.org)<sup>1</sup> as the build system: + +``` +> mkdir -p out/release +> cd out/release +> cmake ../.. +> make +``` +This builds the library as a shared (dynamic) +library (`.so` or `.dylib`), a static library (`.a`), and +as a single object file (`.o`). + +`> sudo make install` (install the library and header files in `/usr/local/lib` and `/usr/local/include`) + +You can build the debug version which does many internal checks and +maintains detailed statistics as: + +``` +> mkdir -p out/debug +> cd out/debug +> cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../.. +> make +``` +This will name the shared library as `libmimalloc-debug.so`. + +Finally, you can build a _secure_ version that uses guard pages, encrypted +free lists, etc., as: +``` +> mkdir -p out/secure +> cd out/secure +> cmake -DMI_SECURE=ON ../.. +> make +``` +This will name the shared library as `libmimalloc-secure.so`. +Use `ccmake`<sup>2</sup> instead of `cmake` +to see and customize all the available build options. + +Notes: +1. Install CMake: `sudo apt-get install cmake` +2. Install CCMake: `sudo apt-get install cmake-curses-gui` + + +## Single source + +You can also directly build the single `src/static.c` file as part of your project without +needing `cmake` at all. Make sure to also add the mimalloc `include` directory to the include path. + + +# Using the library + +The preferred usage is including `<mimalloc.h>`, linking with +the shared- or static library, and using the `mi_malloc` API exclusively for allocation. For example, +``` +> gcc -o myprogram -lmimalloc myfile.c +``` + +mimalloc uses only safe OS calls (`mmap` and `VirtualAlloc`) and can co-exist +with other allocators linked to the same program. +If you use `cmake`, you can simply use: +``` +find_package(mimalloc 1.4 REQUIRED) +``` +in your `CMakeLists.txt` to find a locally installed mimalloc. Then use either: +``` +target_link_libraries(myapp PUBLIC mimalloc) +``` +to link with the shared (dynamic) library, or: +``` +target_link_libraries(myapp PUBLIC mimalloc-static) +``` +to link with the static library. See `test\CMakeLists.txt` for an example. + +For best performance in C++ programs, it is also recommended to override the +global `new` and `delete` operators. For convience, mimalloc provides +[`mimalloc-new-delete.h`](https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/master/include/mimalloc-new-delete.h) which does this for you -- just include it in a single(!) source file in your project. +In C++, mimalloc also provides the `mi_stl_allocator` struct which implements the `std::allocator` +interface. + +You can pass environment variables to print verbose messages (`MIMALLOC_VERBOSE=1`) +and statistics (`MIMALLOC_SHOW_STATS=1`) (in the debug version): +``` +> env MIMALLOC_SHOW_STATS=1 ./cfrac 175451865205073170563711388363 + +175451865205073170563711388363 = 374456281610909315237213 * 468551 + +heap stats: peak total freed unit +normal 2: 16.4 kb 17.5 mb 17.5 mb 16 b ok +normal 3: 16.3 kb 15.2 mb 15.2 mb 24 b ok +normal 4: 64 b 4.6 kb 4.6 kb 32 b ok +normal 5: 80 b 118.4 kb 118.4 kb 40 b ok +normal 6: 48 b 48 b 48 b 48 b ok +normal 17: 960 b 960 b 960 b 320 b ok + +heap stats: peak total freed unit + normal: 33.9 kb 32.8 mb 32.8 mb 1 b ok + huge: 0 b 0 b 0 b 1 b ok + total: 33.9 kb 32.8 mb 32.8 mb 1 b ok +malloc requested: 32.8 mb + + committed: 58.2 kb 58.2 kb 58.2 kb 1 b ok + reserved: 2.0 mb 2.0 mb 2.0 mb 1 b ok + reset: 0 b 0 b 0 b 1 b ok + segments: 1 1 1 +-abandoned: 0 + pages: 6 6 6 +-abandoned: 0 + mmaps: 3 + mmap fast: 0 + mmap slow: 1 + threads: 0 + elapsed: 2.022s + process: user: 1.781s, system: 0.016s, faults: 756, reclaims: 0, rss: 2.7 mb +``` + +The above model of using the `mi_` prefixed API is not always possible +though in existing programs that already use the standard malloc interface, +and another option is to override the standard malloc interface +completely and redirect all calls to the _mimalloc_ library instead . + +## Environment Options + +You can set further options either programmatically (using [`mi_option_set`](https://microsoft.github.io/mimalloc/group__options.html)), +or via environment variables: + +- `MIMALLOC_SHOW_STATS=1`: show statistics when the program terminates. +- `MIMALLOC_VERBOSE=1`: show verbose messages. +- `MIMALLOC_SHOW_ERRORS=1`: show error and warning messages. +- `MIMALLOC_PAGE_RESET=0`: by default, mimalloc will reset (or purge) OS pages that are not in use, to signal to the OS + that the underlying physical memory can be reused. This can reduce memory fragmentation in long running (server) + programs. By setting it to `0` this will no longer be done which can improve performance for batch-like programs. + As an alternative, the `MIMALLOC_RESET_DELAY=`<msecs> can be set higher (100ms by default) to make the page + reset occur less frequently instead of turning it off completely. +- `MIMALLOC_USE_NUMA_NODES=N`: pretend there are at most `N` NUMA nodes. If not set, the actual NUMA nodes are detected + at runtime. Setting `N` to 1 may avoid problems in some virtual environments. Also, setting it to a lower number than + the actual NUMA nodes is fine and will only cause threads to potentially allocate more memory across actual NUMA + nodes (but this can happen in any case as NUMA local allocation is always a best effort but not guaranteed). +- `MIMALLOC_LARGE_OS_PAGES=1`: use large OS pages (2MiB) when available; for some workloads this can significantly + improve performance. Use `MIMALLOC_VERBOSE` to check if the large OS pages are enabled -- usually one needs + to explicitly allow large OS pages (as on [Windows][windows-huge] and [Linux][linux-huge]). However, sometimes + the OS is very slow to reserve contiguous physical memory for large OS pages so use with care on systems that + can have fragmented memory (for that reason, we generally recommend to use `MIMALLOC_RESERVE_HUGE_OS_PAGES` instead whenever possible). + <!-- + - `MIMALLOC_EAGER_REGION_COMMIT=1`: on Windows, commit large (256MiB) regions eagerly. On Windows, these regions + show in the working set even though usually just a small part is committed to physical memory. This is why it + turned off by default on Windows as it looks not good in the task manager. However, turning it on has no + real drawbacks and may improve performance by a little. + --> +- `MIMALLOC_RESERVE_HUGE_OS_PAGES=N`: where N is the number of 1GiB _huge_ OS pages. This reserves the huge pages at + startup and sometimes this can give a large (latency) performance improvement on big workloads. + Usually it is better to not use + `MIMALLOC_LARGE_OS_PAGES` in combination with this setting. Just like large OS pages, use with care as reserving + contiguous physical memory can take a long time when memory is fragmented (but reserving the huge pages is done at + startup only once). + Note that we usually need to explicitly enable huge OS pages (as on [Windows][windows-huge] and [Linux][linux-huge])). + With huge OS pages, it may be beneficial to set the setting + `MIMALLOC_EAGER_COMMIT_DELAY=N` (`N` is 1 by default) to delay the initial `N` segments (of 4MiB) + of a thread to not allocate in the huge OS pages; this prevents threads that are short lived + and allocate just a little to take up space in the huge OS page area (which cannot be reset). + The huge pages are usually allocated evenly among NUMA nodes. + We can use `MIMALLOC_RESERVE_HUGE_OS_PAGES_AT=N` where `N` is the numa node (starting at 0) to allocate all + the huge pages at a specific numa node instead. + +Use caution when using `fork` in combination with either large or huge OS pages: on a fork, the OS uses copy-on-write +for all pages in the original process including the huge OS pages. When any memory is now written in that area, the +OS will copy the entire 1GiB huge page (or 2MiB large page) which can cause the memory usage to grow in large increments. + +[linux-huge]: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/5/html/tuning_and_optimizing_red_hat_enterprise_linux_for_oracle_9i_and_10g_databases/sect-oracle_9i_and_10g_tuning_guide-large_memory_optimization_big_pages_and_huge_pages-configuring_huge_pages_in_red_hat_enterprise_linux_4_or_5 +[windows-huge]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/configure-windows/enable-the-lock-pages-in-memory-option-windows?view=sql-server-2017 + +## Secure Mode + +_mimalloc_ can be build in secure mode by using the `-DMI_SECURE=ON` flags in `cmake`. This build enables various mitigations +to make mimalloc more robust against exploits. In particular: + +- All internal mimalloc pages are surrounded by guard pages and the heap metadata is behind a guard page as well (so a buffer overflow + exploit cannot reach into the metadata). +- All free list pointers are + [encoded](https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/783e3377f79ee82af43a0793910a9f2d01ac7863/include/mimalloc-internal.h#L396) + with per-page keys which is used both to prevent overwrites with a known pointer, as well as to detect heap corruption. +- Double free's are detected (and ignored). +- The free lists are initialized in a random order and allocation randomly chooses between extension and reuse within a page to + mitigate against attacks that rely on a predicable allocation order. Similarly, the larger heap blocks allocated by mimalloc + from the OS are also address randomized. + +As always, evaluate with care as part of an overall security strategy as all of the above are mitigations but not guarantees. + +## Debug Mode + +When _mimalloc_ is built using debug mode, various checks are done at runtime to catch development errors. + +- Statistics are maintained in detail for each object size. They can be shown using `MIMALLOC_SHOW_STATS=1` at runtime. +- All objects have padding at the end to detect (byte precise) heap block overflows. +- Double free's, and freeing invalid heap pointers are detected. +- Corrupted free-lists and some forms of use-after-free are detected. + + +# Overriding Standard Malloc + +Overriding the standard `malloc` (and `new`) can be done either _dynamically_ or _statically_. + +## Dynamic override + +This is the recommended way to override the standard malloc interface. + +### Override on Linux, BSD + +On these ELF-based systems we preload the mimalloc shared +library so all calls to the standard `malloc` interface are +resolved to the _mimalloc_ library. +``` +> env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libmimalloc.so myprogram +``` + +You can set extra environment variables to check that mimalloc is running, +like: +``` +> env MIMALLOC_VERBOSE=1 LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libmimalloc.so myprogram +``` +or run with the debug version to get detailed statistics: +``` +> env MIMALLOC_SHOW_STATS=1 LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libmimalloc-debug.so myprogram +``` + +### Override on MacOS + +On macOS we can also preload the mimalloc shared +library so all calls to the standard `malloc` interface are +resolved to the _mimalloc_ library. +``` +> env DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=/usr/lib/libmimalloc.dylib myprogram +``` + +Note that certain security restrictions may apply when doing this from +the [shell](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43941322/dyld-insert-libraries-ignored-when-calling-application-through-bash). + + +### Override on Windows + +<span id="override_on_windows">Overriding on Windows</span> is robust and has the +particular advantage to be able to redirect all malloc/free calls that go through +the (dynamic) C runtime allocator, including those from other DLL's or libraries. + +The overriding on Windows requires that you link your program explicitly with +the mimalloc DLL and use the C-runtime library as a DLL (using the `/MD` or `/MDd` switch). +Also, the `mimalloc-redirect.dll` (or `mimalloc-redirect32.dll`) must be put +in the same folder as the main `mimalloc-override.dll` at runtime (as it is a dependency). +The redirection DLL ensures that all calls to the C runtime malloc API get redirected to +mimalloc (in `mimalloc-override.dll`). + +To ensure the mimalloc DLL is loaded at run-time it is easiest to insert some +call to the mimalloc API in the `main` function, like `mi_version()` +(or use the `/INCLUDE:mi_version` switch on the linker). See the `mimalloc-override-test` project +for an example on how to use this. For best performance on Windows with C++, it +is also recommended to also override the `new`/`delete` operations (by including +[`mimalloc-new-delete.h`](https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/master/include/mimalloc-new-delete.h) a single(!) source file in your project). + +The environment variable `MIMALLOC_DISABLE_REDIRECT=1` can be used to disable dynamic +overriding at run-time. Use `MIMALLOC_VERBOSE=1` to check if mimalloc was successfully redirected. + +(Note: in principle, it is possible to even patch existing executables without any recompilation +if they are linked with the dynamic C runtime (`ucrtbase.dll`) -- just put the `mimalloc-override.dll` +into the import table (and put `mimalloc-redirect.dll` in the same folder) +Such patching can be done for example with [CFF Explorer](https://ntcore.com/?page_id=388)). + + +## Static override + +On Unix-like systems, you can also statically link with _mimalloc_ to override the standard +malloc interface. The recommended way is to link the final program with the +_mimalloc_ single object file (`mimalloc-override.o`). We use +an object file instead of a library file as linkers give preference to +that over archives to resolve symbols. To ensure that the standard +malloc interface resolves to the _mimalloc_ library, link it as the first +object file. For example: +``` +> gcc -o myprogram mimalloc-override.o myfile1.c ... +``` + +Another way to override statically that works on all platforms, is to +link statically to mimalloc (as shown in the introduction) and include a +header file in each source file that re-defines `malloc` etc. to `mi_malloc`. +This is provided by [`mimalloc-override.h`](https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/master/include/mimalloc-override.h). This only works reliably though if all sources are +under your control or otherwise mixing of pointers from different heaps may occur! + + +# Performance + +Last update: 2021-01-30 + +We tested _mimalloc_ against many other top allocators over a wide +range of benchmarks, ranging from various real world programs to +synthetic benchmarks that see how the allocator behaves under more +extreme circumstances. In our benchmark suite, _mimalloc_ outperforms other leading +allocators (_jemalloc_, _tcmalloc_, _Hoard_, etc), and has a similar memory footprint. A nice property is that it +does consistently well over the wide range of benchmarks. + +General memory allocators are interesting as there exists no algorithm that is +optimal -- for a given allocator one can usually construct a workload +where it does not do so well. The goal is thus to find an allocation +strategy that performs well over a wide range of benchmarks without +suffering from (too much) underperformance in less common situations. + +As always, interpret these results with care since some benchmarks test synthetic +or uncommon situations that may never apply to your workloads. For example, most +allocators do not do well on `xmalloc-testN` but that includes even the best +industrial allocators like _jemalloc_ and _tcmalloc_ that are used in some of +the world's largest systems (like Chrome or FreeBSD). + +Also, the benchmarks here do not measure the behaviour on very large and long-running server workloads, +or worst-case latencies of allocation. Much work has gone into `mimalloc` to work well on such +workloads (for example, to reduce virtual memory fragmentation on long-running services) +but such optimizations are not always reflected in the current benchmark suite. + +We show here only an overview -- for +more specific details and further benchmarks we refer to the +[technical report](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/mimalloc-free-list-sharding-in-action). +The benchmark suite is automated and available separately +as [mimalloc-bench](https://github.com/daanx/mimalloc-bench). + + +## Benchmark Results on a 16-core AMD 5950x (Zen3) + +Testing on the 16-core AMD 5950x processor at 3.4Ghz (4.9Ghz boost), with +with 32GiB memory at 3600Mhz, running Ubuntu 20.04 with glibc 2.31 and GCC 9.3.0. + +We measure three versions of _mimalloc_: the main version `mi` (tag:v1.7.0), +the new v2.0 beta version as `xmi` (tag:v2.0.0), and the main version in secure mode as `smi` (tag:v1.7.0). + +The other allocators are +Google's [_tcmalloc_](https://github.com/gperftools/gperftools) (`tc`, tag:gperftools-2.8.1) used in Chrome, +Facebook's [_jemalloc_](https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc) (`je`, tag:5.2.1) by Jason Evans used in Firefox and FreeBSD, +the Intel thread building blocks [allocator](https://github.com/intel/tbb) (`tbb`, tag:v2020.3), +[rpmalloc](https://github.com/mjansson/rpmalloc) (`rp`,tag:1.4.1) by Mattias Jansson, +the original scalable [_Hoard_](https://github.com/emeryberger/Hoard) (git:d880f72) allocator by Emery Berger \[1], +the memory compacting [_Mesh_](https://github.com/plasma-umass/Mesh) (git:67ff31a) allocator by +Bobby Powers _et al_ \[8], +and finally the default system allocator (`glibc`, 2.31) (based on _PtMalloc2_). + +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2021/bench-amd5950x-2021-01-30-a.svg"/> +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2021/bench-amd5950x-2021-01-30-b.svg"/> + +Any benchmarks ending in `N` run on all 32 logical cores in parallel. +Results are averaged over 10 runs and reported relative +to mimalloc (where 1.2 means it took 1.2× longer to run). +The legend also contains the _overall relative score_ between the +allocators where 100 points is the maximum if an allocator is fastest on +all benchmarks. + +The single threaded _cfrac_ benchmark by Dave Barrett is an implementation of +continued fraction factorization which uses many small short-lived allocations. +All allocators do well on such common usage, where _mimalloc_ is just a tad +faster than _tcmalloc_ and +_jemalloc_. + +The _leanN_ program is interesting as a large realistic and +concurrent workload of the [Lean](https://github.com/leanprover/lean) +theorem prover compiling its own standard library, and there is a 13% +speedup over _tcmalloc_. This is +quite significant: if Lean spends 20% of its time in the +allocator that means that _mimalloc_ is 1.6× faster than _tcmalloc_ +here. (This is surprising as that is not measured in a pure +allocation benchmark like _alloc-test_. We conjecture that we see this +outsized improvement here because _mimalloc_ has better locality in +the allocation which improves performance for the *other* computations +in a program as well). + +The single threaded _redis_ benchmark again show that most allocators do well on such workloads. + +The _larsonN_ server benchmark by Larson and Krishnan \[2] allocates and frees between threads. They observed this +behavior (which they call _bleeding_) in actual server applications, and the benchmark simulates this. +Here, _mimalloc_ is quite a bit faster than _tcmalloc_ and _jemalloc_ probably due to the object migration between different threads. + +The _mstressN_ workload performs many allocations and re-allocations, +and migrates objects between threads (as in _larsonN_). However, it also +creates and destroys the _N_ worker threads a few times keeping some objects +alive beyond the life time of the allocating thread. We observed this +behavior in many larger server applications. + +The [_rptestN_](https://github.com/mjansson/rpmalloc-benchmark) benchmark +by Mattias Jansson is a allocator test originally designed +for _rpmalloc_, and tries to simulate realistic allocation patterns over +multiple threads. Here the differences between allocators become more apparent. + +The second benchmark set tests specific aspects of the allocators and +shows even more extreme differences between them. + +The _alloc-test_, by +[OLogN Technologies AG](http://ithare.com/testing-memory-allocators-ptmalloc2-tcmalloc-hoard-jemalloc-while-trying-to-simulate-real-world-loads/), is a very allocation intensive benchmark doing millions of +allocations in various size classes. The test is scaled such that when an +allocator performs almost identically on _alloc-test1_ as _alloc-testN_ it +means that it scales linearly. + +The _sh6bench_ and _sh8bench_ benchmarks are +developed by [MicroQuill](http://www.microquill.com/) as part of SmartHeap. +In _sh6bench_ _mimalloc_ does much +better than the others (more than 2.5× faster than _jemalloc_). +We cannot explain this well but believe it is +caused in part by the "reverse" free-ing pattern in _sh6bench_. +The _sh8bench_ is a variation with object migration +between threads; whereas _tcmalloc_ did well on _sh6bench_, the addition of object migration causes it to be 10× slower than before. + +The _xmalloc-testN_ benchmark by Lever and Boreham \[5] and Christian Eder, simulates an asymmetric workload where +some threads only allocate, and others only free -- they observed this pattern in +larger server applications. Here we see that +the _mimalloc_ technique of having non-contended sharded thread free +lists pays off as it outperforms others by a very large margin. Only _rpmalloc_, _tbb_, and _glibc_ also scale well on this benchmark. + +The _cache-scratch_ benchmark by Emery Berger \[1], and introduced with +the Hoard allocator to test for _passive-false_ sharing of cache lines. +With a single thread they all +perform the same, but when running with multiple threads the potential allocator +induced false sharing of the cache lines can cause large run-time differences. +Crundal \[6] describes in detail why the false cache line sharing occurs in the _tcmalloc_ design, and also discusses how this +can be avoided with some small implementation changes. +Only the _tbb_, _rpmalloc_ and _mesh_ allocators also avoid the +cache line sharing completely, while _Hoard_ and _glibc_ seem to mitigate +the effects. Kukanov and Voss \[7] describe in detail +how the design of _tbb_ avoids the false cache line sharing. + + +## On a 36-core Intel Xeon + +For completeness, here are the results on a big Amazon +[c5.18xlarge](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/#Compute_Optimized) instance +consisting of a 2×18-core Intel Xeon (Cascade Lake) at 3.4GHz (boost 3.5GHz) +with 144GiB ECC memory, running Ubuntu 20.04 with glibc 2.31, GCC 9.3.0, and +Clang 10.0.0. This time, the mimalloc allocators (mi, xmi, and smi) were +compiled with the Clang compiler instead of GCC. +The results are similar to the AMD results but it is interesting to +see the differences in the _larsonN_, _mstressN_, and _xmalloc-testN_ benchmarks. + +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2021/bench-c5-18xlarge-2021-01-30-a.svg"/> +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2021/bench-c5-18xlarge-2021-01-30-b.svg"/> + + +## Peak Working Set + +The following figure shows the peak working set (rss) of the allocators +on the benchmarks (on the c5.18xlarge instance). + +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2021/bench-c5-18xlarge-2021-01-30-rss-a.svg"/> +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2021/bench-c5-18xlarge-2021-01-30-rss-b.svg"/> + +Note that the _xmalloc-testN_ memory usage should be disregarded as it +allocates more the faster the program runs. Similarly, memory usage of +_larsonN_, _mstressN_, _rptestN_ and _sh8bench_ can vary depending on scheduling and +speed. Nevertheless, we hope to improve the memory usage on _mstressN_ +and _rptestN_ (just as _cfrac_, _larsonN_ and _sh8bench_ have a small working set which skews the results). + +<!-- +# Previous Benchmarks + +Todo: should we create a separate page for this? + +## Benchmark Results on 36-core Intel: 2020-01-20 + +Testing on a big Amazon EC2 compute instance +([c5.18xlarge](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/#Compute_Optimized)) +consisting of a 72 processor Intel Xeon at 3GHz +with 144GiB ECC memory, running Ubuntu 18.04.1 with glibc 2.27 and GCC 7.4.0. +The measured allocators are _mimalloc_ (xmi, tag:v1.4.0, page reset enabled) +and its secure build as _smi_, +Google's [_tcmalloc_](https://github.com/gperftools/gperftools) (tc, tag:gperftools-2.7) used in Chrome, +Facebook's [_jemalloc_](https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc) (je, tag:5.2.1) by Jason Evans used in Firefox and FreeBSD, +the Intel thread building blocks [allocator](https://github.com/intel/tbb) (tbb, tag:2020), +[rpmalloc](https://github.com/mjansson/rpmalloc) (rp,tag:1.4.0) by Mattias Jansson, +the original scalable [_Hoard_](https://github.com/emeryberger/Hoard) (tag:3.13) allocator by Emery Berger \[1], +the memory compacting [_Mesh_](https://github.com/plasma-umass/Mesh) (git:51222e7) allocator by +Bobby Powers _et al_ \[8], +and finally the default system allocator (glibc, 2.27) (based on _PtMalloc2_). + +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2020/bench-c5-18xlarge-2020-01-20-a.svg"/> +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2020/bench-c5-18xlarge-2020-01-20-b.svg"/> + +The following figure shows the peak working set (rss) of the allocators +on the benchmarks (on the c5.18xlarge instance). + +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2020/bench-c5-18xlarge-2020-01-20-rss-a.svg"/> +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2020/bench-c5-18xlarge-2020-01-20-rss-b.svg"/> + + +## On 24-core AMD Epyc, 2020-01-16 + +For completeness, here are the results on a +[r5a.12xlarge](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/#Memory_Optimized) instance +having a 48 processor AMD Epyc 7000 at 2.5GHz with 384GiB of memory. +The results are similar to the Intel results but it is interesting to +see the differences in the _larsonN_, _mstressN_, and _xmalloc-testN_ benchmarks. + +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2020/bench-r5a-12xlarge-2020-01-16-a.svg"/> +<img width="90%" src="doc/bench-2020/bench-r5a-12xlarge-2020-01-16-b.svg"/> + +--> + + +# References + +- \[1] Emery D. Berger, Kathryn S. McKinley, Robert D. Blumofe, and Paul R. Wilson. + _Hoard: A Scalable Memory Allocator for Multithreaded Applications_ + the Ninth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS-IX). Cambridge, MA, November 2000. + [pdf](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/papers/asplos-2000.pdf) + +- \[2] P. Larson and M. Krishnan. _Memory allocation for long-running server applications_. + In ISMM, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, 1998. [pdf](http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.45.1947&rep=rep1&type=pdf) + +- \[3] D. Grunwald, B. Zorn, and R. Henderson. + _Improving the cache locality of memory allocation_. In R. Cartwright, editor, + Proceedings of the Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pages 177–186, New York, NY, USA, June 1993. [pdf](http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.43.6621&rep=rep1&type=pdf) + +- \[4] J. Barnes and P. Hut. _A hierarchical O(n*log(n)) force-calculation algorithm_. Nature, 324:446-449, 1986. + +- \[5] C. Lever, and D. Boreham. _Malloc() Performance in a Multithreaded Linux Environment._ + In USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Freenix Session. San Diego, CA. Jun. 2000. + Available at <https://github.com/kuszmaul/SuperMalloc/tree/master/tests> + +- \[6] Timothy Crundal. _Reducing Active-False Sharing in TCMalloc_. 2016. CS16S1 project at the Australian National University. [pdf](http://courses.cecs.anu.edu.au/courses/CSPROJECTS/16S1/Reports/Timothy_Crundal_Report.pdf) + +- \[7] Alexey Kukanov, and Michael J Voss. + _The Foundations for Scalable Multi-Core Software in Intel Threading Building Blocks._ + Intel Technology Journal 11 (4). 2007 + +- \[8] Bobby Powers, David Tench, Emery D. Berger, and Andrew McGregor. + _Mesh: Compacting Memory Management for C/C++_ + In Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI'19), June 2019, pages 333-–346. + +<!-- +- \[9] Paul Liétar, Theodore Butler, Sylvan Clebsch, Sophia Drossopoulou, Juliana Franco, Matthew J Parkinson, + Alex Shamis, Christoph M Wintersteiger, and David Chisnall. + _Snmalloc: A Message Passing Allocator._ + In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management, 122–135. ACM. 2019. +--> + +# Contributing + +This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a +Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us +the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com. + +When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide +a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions +provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA. + + +# Older Release Notes + +* 2020-09-24, `v1.6.7`: stable release 1.6: using standard C atomics, passing tsan testing, improved + handling of failing to commit on Windows, add [`mi_process_info`](https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/master/include/mimalloc.h#L156) api call. +* 2020-08-06, `v1.6.4`: stable release 1.6: improved error recovery in low-memory situations, + support for IllumOS and Haiku, NUMA support for Vista/XP, improved NUMA detection for AMD Ryzen, ubsan support. +* 2020-05-05, `v1.6.3`: stable release 1.6: improved behavior in out-of-memory situations, improved malloc zones on macOS, + build PIC static libraries by default, add option to abort on out-of-memory, line buffered statistics. +* 2020-04-20, `v1.6.2`: stable release 1.6: fix compilation on Android, MingW, Raspberry, and Conda, + stability fix for Windows 7, fix multiple mimalloc instances in one executable, fix `strnlen` overload, + fix aligned debug padding. +* 2020-02-17, `v1.6.1`: stable release 1.6: minor updates (build with clang-cl, fix alignment issue for small objects). +* 2020-02-09, `v1.6.0`: stable release 1.6: fixed potential memory leak, improved overriding + and thread local support on FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly, and macOSX. New byte-precise + heap block overflow detection in debug mode (besides the double-free detection and free-list + corruption detection). Add `nodiscard` attribute to most allocation functions. + Enable `MIMALLOC_PAGE_RESET` by default. New reclamation strategy for abandoned heap pages + for better memory footprint. +* 2020-02-09, `v1.5.0`: stable release 1.5: improved free performance, small bug fixes. +* 2020-01-22, `v1.4.0`: stable release 1.4: improved performance for delayed OS page reset, +more eager concurrent free, addition of STL allocator, fixed potential memory leak. +* 2020-01-15, `v1.3.0`: stable release 1.3: bug fixes, improved randomness and [stronger +free list encoding](https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc/blob/783e3377f79ee82af43a0793910a9f2d01ac7863/include/mimalloc-internal.h#L396) in secure mode. +* 2019-12-22, `v1.2.2`: stable release 1.2: minor updates. +* 2019-11-22, `v1.2.0`: stable release 1.2: bug fixes, improved secure mode (free list corruption checks, double free mitigation). Improved dynamic overriding on Windows. +* 2019-10-07, `v1.1.0`: stable release 1.1. +* 2019-09-01, `v1.0.8`: pre-release 8: more robust windows dynamic overriding, initial huge page support. +* 2019-08-10, `v1.0.6`: pre-release 6: various performance improvements. + |