Question

Consider two applications: one (num. 1) that invokes malloc() many times, and the other (num. 2) that invokes malloc() few times.
Both applications allocate the same amount of memory (assume 100MB).
For which application the next malloc() call will be faster, #1 or #2?
In other words: Does malloc() have an index of allocated locations in memory?

Answer 1

Of course this completely depends on the malloc implementation, but in this case, with no calls to free, most malloc implementations will probably give you the same algorithmic speed.

As another answer commented, usually there will be a list of free blocks, but if you have not called free, there will just be one, so it should be O(1) in both cases.

This assumes that the memory allocated for the heap is big enough in both cases. In case #1, you will have allocated more total memory, as each allocation involves memory overhead to store meta-data, as a result you may need to call sbrk(), or equivalent to grow the heap in case #1, which would add an additional overhead.

They will probably be different due to cache and other second order effects, since the memory alignments for the new allocation won’t be the same.

If you have been freeing some of the memory blocks, then it is likely that #2 will be faster due to less fragmentation, and so a smaller list of free blocks to search.

If you have freed all the memory blocks, it should end up being exactly the same, since any sane free implementation will have coalesced the blocks back into a single arena of memory.