[Boost-users] Changing the heap allocator

From: David Barrett-Lennard (dbl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-07 21:54:36

Hi,
 
I'm working on a project where I've replaced Microsoft's (terrible) heap
allocator with the Doug Lea allocator.  There seems to be some cases
where the Windows XP allocator is 500 times slower than it should be.
This made my program take minutes rather than seconds to run.  To try to
understand what kind of allocation patterns cause the behaviour I wrote
a small console application (see below).  After playing around with
different allocation patterns for half an hour I found a case where the
pathological behaviour appeared.  I'm none the wiser about the problem.
For example, moving the malloc(301) statement before the 7 x
malloc(1000) makes the problem go away!   However, given the ease with
which I rediscovered the problem, I wonder why there aren't more
complaints about Microsoft's heap allocator.  With some allocation
patterns I have seen the allocator fall below 1kHz on a Pentium IV 2GHz
machine!
 
I've created a library that exports alternative versions of operator new
and operator delete, by using a def file as follows
 
EXPORTS
      ??2_at_YAPAXI@Z
      ??3_at_YAXPAX@Z
 
I've had to do some hacky things to make it work with the STL (because
of msvcp60.dll) , but that's another story!  
 
Now my question : I want to use boost, but need to work out how to make
it use a different allocator.  Will I need to rebuild the boost dlls
(such as boost_python.dll),  against my static library?
 
 
Regards,
David Barrett-Lennard
 
 
/////////////////////// heap allocation test ///////////////////////////
 
#include <iostream>
#include <time.h>
 
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    for (int count=1 ; count <= 5 ; ++count)
    {
        int n1 = 0, n2 = 0;
        clock_t start = clock();
        {
            const int NUM = 10000;
            void* L[NUM*7];
            for (int i=0 ; i < NUM ; ++i)
            {
                for (int j=0 ; j < 7 ; ++j) L[n1++] = malloc(1000);
                void* leak = malloc(301);
                ++n2;
            }
            for (int k=n1-1 ; k >= 0 ; --k) free(L[k]);
        }
        clock_t elapsed = clock()-start;
        if (elapsed)
        {
            std::cout << "Time = " << elapsed << " ms" 
                      << "  Rate = " << 1000 * (n1 + n2) / elapsed << "
Hz" 
                      << std::endl;
        }
    }
    return 0;
}