malloc vs ptmalloc2

[David Schultz]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005, Andrew MacIntyre wrote:
> David Schultz wrote:
> >Other than that, I don't know enough
> >details about ptmalloc to speculate, except to say that for most
> >real-world workloads on modern systems, the impact of the malloc
> >implementation is likely to be negligible.  Of course, test
> >results would be interesting...
> 
> Some language interpreters by design malloc()/realloc()/free() memory 
> constantly. Python being a well known example of such an interpreter.
> 
> Because the issues with memory allocators are legion in the context of a 
> multitude of platforms, Python eventually gained a highly specialised 
> allocator geared to its usage patterns (which brought some other 
> benefits with it too).  I think I've seen references to Perl doing 
> something similar.

Right, databases, language runtimes, and the small set of other
applications for which it really matters usually have their own
special-purpose allocators.  I was counting on that when I said
that replacing malloc() is unlikely to make a big difference.
(One could argue, of course, that it's unfortunate that
applications need to do so.)