Memory

macOS and iOS

• A look at how malloc works on the Mac by Matt Gallagher.
• OSX Heap Exploitation
• In the Zone: OS X Heap Exploitation
• Identifying high-memory use with jetsam event reports
• Handling low memory conditions in iOS and Mavericks
• Enabling the Malloc Debugging Features
• iOS WeChat memory monitoring
• VM Tracker for iOS memory in-depth exploration
• iOS Debugging Magic
• Using Dynamic Libraries
• Trace Dynamic Memory Allocations
• Page Cache, the Affair Between Memory and Files
• About Memory Management - Advanced Memory Management Programming Guide
• About the Virtual Memory System - Memory Usage Performance Guidelines. Start from the top. Definitely read Tips for Allocating Memory.
• iOS Memory Deep Dive
• No pressure, Mon! Handling low memory conditions in iOS and Mavericks

FreeBSD

• Exploring Swap on FreeBSD
• Preventing FreeBSD to kill PostgreSQL (aka OOM Killer prevention)
• typed_mem – heap memory accounting system

Android

• Understanding Android memory usage (Google I/O ‘18)
• Debugging Native Memory Use
• Is this explanation about VSS/RSS/PSS/USS accurate?

Linux

• LinuxMM: OOM_Killer
• Overcommit in Linux kernel
• How to Configure the Linux Out-of-Memory Killer
• Improving the OOM killer
• Taming the OOM killer
• The “too small to fail” memory-allocation rule
• All the LWN articles about OOM killer
• Open-sourcing oomd, a new approach to handling OOMs
• OOM handling
• what is the purpose of memory overcommitment on Linux?
• Kernel Korner - Allocating Memory in the Kernel

Nuances of LD_PRELOAD and wrapping malloc() and friends

• failmalloc
• Correct usage of LD_PRELOAD for hooking libc functions
• Code Injection on Linux and macOS with LD_PRELOAD
• Create a wrapper function for malloc and free in C
• Malloc Hooks in Android
• Securing malloc in glibc: Why malloc hooks had to go
• Replacing malloc

malloc() and NULL

Take the following with a grain of salt.

• Four reasons to check what the malloc function returned. The follow-up discussion in Russian.

TLS is not easy

• A Deep dive into (implicit) Thread Local Storage
• ELF Handling For Thread-Local Storage by Ulrich Drepper.
• Use Cases for Thread-Local Storage by Paul E. McKenney.
• Bug: Access to __thread variable may call malloc
• Bug: alloc-tls: Handle thread-local storage on platforms without thread_local

General

• Memory Management Reference
• A Memory Allocator by Doug Lea.
• Page Size
• /Zc:throwingNew (Assume operator new throws)
• All papers written by PDOS (MIT Parallel & Distributed Operating Systems Group) since ‘93
• Malloc Internals and You by DJ Delorie.
• A look at how malloc works on the Mac by Matt Gallagher.
• Heap: Pleasures and Pains by Murali R. Krishnan.
• Some things I’ve learned about memory
• Persistent Memory Allocation
• How to exploit a double free vulnerability in 2021
• Scalable memory allocation using jemalloc

Performance

• Random ASCII – tech blog of Bruce Dawson
• Understand the Impact of Low-Lock Techniques in Multithreaded Apps by Vance Morrison.
• Concurrency: What Every Dev Must Know About Multithreaded Apps by Vance Morrison.
• Profiling Custom Memory Allocators
• .NET memory analysis and diagnostics by Maoni Stephens.
• Work related to optimizing memory allocations in Firefox
• Tracing with GCC
• Linux RCU
• How Memory Allocation Affects Performance in Multithreaded Programs
• Magazines and Vmem: Extending the Slab Allocator to Many CPUs and Arbitrary Resources
• Beyond malloc efficiency to fleet efficiency: a hugepage-aware memory allocator
• TfMallocTag Class Reference
• You Can Do Any Kind of Atomic Read-Modify-Write Operation
• Concurrency in C++11
• Pool tag quick scanning for windows memory analysis
• Concurrency Freaks
• Is passing arguments as const references premature optimization?
• Tuning Oracle databases
• Chrome OS Out of Memory Design
• Examining Problematic Memory in C/C++ Applications with BPF, perf, and Memcheck
• Clownshoes available in sizes 2^10+1 and up!
• Beyond malloc efficiency to fleet efficiency

CppCon (and other) talks

• How to Write a Heap Memory Profiler - Milian Wolff - CppCon 2019
• Small is beautiful: Techniques to minimise memory footprint - Steven Pigeon - CppCon 2019)
• Understanding Allocator Impact on Runtime Performance in C++ - Parsa Amini - CppCon 2022
• Trading at light speed: designing low latency systems in C++ - David Gross - Meeting C++ 2022
• CppCon 2014: Paul E. McKenney “C++ Memory Model Meets High-Update-Rate Data Structures”
• What Programmers Should Know About Memory Allocation - S. Al Bahra, H. Sowa, P. Khuong - CppCon 2019
• Abusing Your Memory Model for Fun and Profit - Samy Al Bahra, Paul Khuong - CppCon 2019
• Building a Lock-free Multi-producer, Multi-consumer Queue for Tcmalloc - Matt Kulukundis - CppCon 21
• FOWM’24: What we learned from C++ atomics and memory model standardization

Papers and references on allocators and memory management

• A bounded memory allocator for software-defined global address spaces
• Allocators in Rust
• libumem and its port.
• CLMalloc: contiguous memory management mechanism for large-scale CPU-accelerator hybrid architectures
• CustoMalloc: efficient synthesized memory allocators
• DieHard
• dlmalloc
• dnmalloc
• scalloc: Fast, multicore-scalable, low-fragmentation memory allocation through large virtual memory and global data structures. Source code is here. Project page is here.
• ffmalloc
• FLFUMSA
• FreeGuard
• Guarder
• Hardened malloc
• HMalloc
• Hoard
• How Hard is it to Adapt a Memory Allocator to CHERI?
• Identifying Memory Allocation Patterns in HEP Software. Here’s how malloc interpose is implemented.
• Intel TBB allocator
• IsoAlloc
• jemalloc
• jmalloc
• kmalloc
• LFMalloc
• LFMalloc
• LFMallocwoGC
• LKmalloc
• Lock-free memory allocator without garbage collection on multicore embedded devices
• Lockless
• LRMalloc
• ltalloc
• Makalu: fast recoverable allocation of non-volatile memory. Source code is here.
• MarkUs
• Mallacc: Accelerating Memory Allocation
• MCMalloc
• McRT-Malloc: a scalable transactional memory allocator
• PAllocator: Memory management techniques for large-scale persistent-main-memory systems
• Mesh
• Mostly lock-free malloc
• MPKAlloc
• mtmalloc: article here and manual here
• musl malloc
• NBMALLOC: Allocating Memory in a Lock-Free Manner. See this paper as well. Project page is here.
• nedmalloc
• NUMAlloc: A Faster NUMA Memory Allocator
• NVAlloc: rethinking heap metadata management in persistent memory allocators. Source code is here.
• ottomalloc
• PartitionAlloc
• phkmalloc
• Profiling a warehouse-scale computer
• ptmalloc3
• ptlbmalloc2
• Rockall
• rpmalloc
• Scalable lock-free dynamic memory allocation
• Scudo
• SFMalloc
• SlimGuard
• snmalloc and paper here.
• SSMalloc: a low-latency, locality-conscious memory allocator with stable performance scalability
• streamflow
• Supermalloc
• Thrifty-malloc
• TCMalloc and paper here.
• TLSF
• Ralloc: Understanding and optimizing persistent memory allocation.
• VCMalloc
• Traces of vmalloc in Apple’s ksh.
• Vmalloc
• wfspan: Wait-free Dynamic Memory Management
• xmalloc
• XMalloc