Mimalloc

mimalloc

Original author(s)	Daan Leijen / Microsoft Research
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Initial release	July 2019; 5 years ago (2019-07)
Stable release	2.1.7[1]  / 5 May 2024
Repository	github.com/microsoft/mimalloc
Written in	C
Operating system	Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, macOS, Linux
Type	Software library
License	MIT License
Website	microsoft.github.io/mimalloc/

mimalloc (pronounced "me-malloc") is a free and open-source compact general-purpose memory allocator developed by Microsoft^[2] with focus on performance characteristics. The library is about 11000 lines of code and works as a drop-in replacement for malloc of the C standard library^[3] and requires no additional code changes.^[4] mimalloc was initially developed for the run-time systems of the Lean and Koka languages. Notable design aspects include free list sharding, eager page reset, first-class heaps. It can co-exist with other memory allocators linked to the same program. mimalloc is available on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and *BSD.^[5] The source code is licensed under MIT License and available on GitHub.^[6]

See also

• C dynamic memory allocation
• Manual memory management
• Dynamic memory allocation
• Hoard memory allocator

References

1. "Release 2.1.7". 21 May 2024. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
2. "Maruf Ali: Investigation of Memory Allocators" (PDF).
3. "Microsoft releases optimized malloc() as open source - Slashdot". slashdot.org.
4. "Analysis of mimalloc". Develop Paper. September 11, 2019.
5. "Google Translate". translate.google.com. 25 June 2019.
6. "microsoft/mimalloc". July 5, 2020 – via GitHub.

Further reading

• Leijen, Daan; Zorn, Benjamin; De Moura, Leonardo (2019). Mimalloc: Free List Sharding in Action (PDF). doi:10.1007/978-3-030-34175-6_13. ISBN 978-3-030-34174-9. S2CID 198363081.

External links

• GitHub - microsoft/mimalloc
• Reviewing mimalloc: Part I - Ayende @ Rahien
• Reviewing mimalloc: Part II - Ayende @ Rahien