Question

I currently have heavily multi-threaded server application, and I’m shopping around for a good multi-threaded memory allocator.

So far I’m torn between:

• Sun’s umem
• Google’s tcmalloc
• Intel’s threading building blocks allocator
• Emery Berger’s hoard

From what I’ve found hoard might be the fastest, but I hadn’t heard of it before today, so I’m skeptical if its really as good as it seems. Anyone have personal experience trying out these allocators?

Answer 1

I’ve used tcmalloc and read about Hoard. Both have similar implementations and both achieve roughly linear performance scaling with respect to the number of threads/CPUs (according to the graphs on their respective sites).

So: if performance is really that incredibly crucial, then do performance/load testing. Otherwise, just roll a dice and pick one of the listed (weighted by ease of use on your target platform).

And from trshiv’s link, it looks like Hoard, tcmalloc, and ptmalloc are all roughly comparable for speed. Overall, tt looks like ptmalloc is optimized for taking as little room as possible, Hoard is optimized for a trade-off of speed + memory usage, and tcmalloc is optimized for pure speed.