CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cmemory-management
nav_jan
nav_jan

Reputation: 2553

Does calling malloc multiple times waste memory?

Currently working on a code I realized that it used to call malloc multiple times (around 10 million calls) and allocated small chunks (around 10 bytes) every time.

I changed the code a little and instead of calling malloc 10 million times I now call malloc 10 times allocating a large chunk of memory (10 million bytes) every time.

With this change I noticed that peak memory consumption of my code changed from ~15 GB to ~14 GB.

Why is this happening? Does malloc allocates some extra chunk with every call?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1334

Answers (1)

Jeyaram
Jeyaram

Reputation: 9474

definitely. Because malloc() allocates some amount of bytes for meta-data. so if multiple malloc() leads to more meta-data.

This link gives you more detail about how malloc allocates memory as well as metadata.

Upvotes: 7

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