[webkit-dev] WTF::fastMalloc

[Maciej Stachowiak]

These days, pure JavaScript tests won't do a lot of malloc() calls, so it's more relevant to try a page load speed or DOM benchmark.

 - Maciej

On Oct 4, 2013, at 6:10 AM, Osztrogonác Csaba <oszi at inf.u-szeged.hu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> As Zoltan said this feature was introduced for Qt port. But now
> EFL, GTK and Nix use fastmalloc instead of system malloc too.
> It was fine and used for some use-cases in those days.
> 
> To make a decision if the fastmalloc or the system malloc is better,
> we need some measurements. I made a quick test on EFL and Nix with
> SunSpider and with the Methanol test suite and haven't seen any
> significant performance differences between fastmalloc and system
> malloc on my desktop: Ubuntu 12.04 (x86_64). I haven't checked the
> memory consumption, it would need more preparation.
> 
> Keeping the old TCMalloc and the custom allocator framework isn't
> blocker for us (University of Szeged), so we don't have objection
> against removing it from trunk. If nodbody is interested in maintaining
> the framework, it can be removed. If the final conclusion would be
> dropping TCMalloc, we willingly help in this clean-up.
> 
> Ossy
> 
> Zoltan Horvath írta:
>> I used to work on memory related topics, while I was working on the University of Szeged.
>> Based on a 2.5-year-old measurement (http://webkit.sed.hu/blog/20100302/war-allocators-qtlaunchers-coast) on the Qt-port, the page loading on the Methanol test suite was 5% faster (avg) with TCmalloc than the default system allocator on Linux. The performance results of the SunSpider suite was similar for both allocators. The memory consumption was always lower with the default os allocator. I guess the new allocator only has iOS support. I'm fine with removing TCmalloc, although this direction might raises further questions, like removing the custom allocation framework also. Feel free to cc me on bugs, I can help by contributing some patches. 
> 
>> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Geoffrey Garen <ggaren at apple.com     I'm planning to remove our years-out-of-date port of TCMalloc, and
>>    replace it with something that takes maximum advantage of Mac and
>>    iOS virtual memory, threading, and security APIs.
>>    I've heard that TCMalloc has caused some problems for non-Mac,
>>    non-iOS ports in the past. So, if you maintain a port, this change
>>    might make things simpler for you.
>>    Are there any ports whose built-in malloc implementations are slow
>>    enough that they can't get by without TCMalloc?
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