CODEWITHSUNDEEP
clinuxmemory-managementmallocmmap
MetallicPriest
MetallicPriest

Reputation: 30825

What if I allocate memory using mmap instead of malloc?

What are the disadvantages of allocating memory using mmap (with MAP_PRIVATE and MAP_ANONYMOUS) than using malloc? For data in function scope, I would use stack memory anyway and therefore not malloc.

One disadvantage that comes to mind is for dynamic data structures such as trees and linked lists, where you frequently require to allocate and deallocate small chunks of data. Using mmap there would be expensive for two reasons, one for allocating at granularity of 4096 bytes and the other for requiring to make a system call.

But in other scenarios, do you think malloc is better than mmap? Secondly, am I overestimating disadvantage of mmap for dynamic data structures?

One advantage of mmap over malloc I can think of is that memory is immediately returned to the OS, when you do munmap, whereas with malloc/free, I guess memory uptil the data segment break point is never returned, but kept for reusage.

Upvotes: 28

Views: 17932

Answers (3)

Mark Lakata
Mark Lakata

Reputation: 20907

One feature that mmap has that malloc doesn't, is mmap allows you to allocate using Huge Pages (flag argument has MAP_HUGETLB set), while malloc doesn't have that option.

Upvotes: 8

Kerrek SB
Kerrek SB

Reputation: 477522

First off, mmap() is a platform specific construct, so if you plan on writing portable C, it's already out.

Second, malloc() is essentially implemented in terms of mmap(), but it's a sort of intelligent library wrapper around the system call: it will request new memory from the system when needed, but until then it will pick a piece of memory in an area that's already committed to the process.

Therefore, if you want to do ordinary dynamic memory allocation, use malloc(), end of story. Use of mmap() for memory allocation should be reserved for special situations (e.g. if you actually want a whole page for yourself, aligned at the page boundary), and always abstracted into a single piece of library code so that others may easily understand what you're doing.

Upvotes: 23

Fred Foo
Fred Foo

Reputation: 363817

Yes, malloc is better than mmap. It's much easier to use, much more fine-grained and much more portable. In the end, it will call mmap anyway.

If you start doing everyday memory management with mmap, you'll want to implement some way of parceling it out in smaller chunks than pages and you will end up reimplementing malloc -- in a suboptimal way, probably.

Upvotes: 35

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