smmalloc

About

smmalloc is a fast and efficient "proxy" allocator designed to handle many small allocations/deallocations in heavy multithreaded scenarios. The allocator created for using in applications where the performance is critical such as video games. Designed to speed up the typical memory allocation pattern in C++ such as many small allocations and deletions. This is a proxy allocator means that smmalloc handles only specific allocation sizes and pass-through all other allocations to generic heap allocator.

Commercial games using smmalloc

• Warface (PS4, X1, Nintendo Switch)

Features

• Near zero size overhead for handled allocations (allocator does not store any per-allocation meta information)
• Blazing fast (~40 cycles per operation) when allocator thread cache is used (configurable)
• Very simple to integrate on any platform. Just make your current allocator as fallback allocator and let the smmalloc handle specific allocations and speed up your application.
• Highly scalable in multithread environment.

Performance

Here is an example of performance comparison for several different allocators.
Platform: Windows 10, Intel Core i7-2600

Here is an example of performance comparison for several different allocators.
Platform: Playstation 4

Usage

_sm_allocator_create - create allocator instance
_sm_allocator_destroy - destroy allocator instance
_sm_allocator_thread_cache_create - create thread cache for current thread
_sm_allocator_thread_cache_destroy - destroy thread cache for current thread
_sm_malloc - allocate aligned memory block
_sm_free - free memory block
_sm_realloc - reallocate memory block
_sm_msize - get usable memory size

Tiny code example

// create allocator to handle 16, 32, 48 and 64 allocations (4 buckets, 16Mb each) 
sm_allocator space = _sm_allocator_create(4, (16 * 1024 * 1024));

// allocate 19 bytes with 16 bytes alignment
void* p = _sm_malloc(space, 19, 16);

// free memory
_sm_free(space, p)

// destroy allocator
_sm_allocator_destroy(space);