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Title: Polymorphic Allocators for Fundamental Libraries
Proposer: Alisdair Meredith
Type: Presentation
Duration: 90 mins
Description:
One of the key resources in any C++ program is memory, as every object must, if nothing else, occupy some memory itself. Unsurprisingly, this has lead to many attempt to find 'a better memory allocator', often with competing priorities. Do you want a faster allocator? Thread-specific allocation? Or more “secure”? Do you want to better track leaks and report
errors? Or simply monitor usage patterns?
With polymorphic allocators, you can pick the most appropriate type of allocator for your specific problem, on a per-object basis rather than per-whole-application. There is over a decade of experience with this allocator model at Bloomberg, and it is now planned for standardization as part of the forthcoming Library Fundamentals TS, building on the foundations for custom allocators laid down in C++11.
This session will explore the motivation for using custom allocators, highlighting the value of being able to specify per-object. It will then walk through the facilities and some of the proposed new allocators for the fundamentals TS, and discuss some of the implications of programming with this new model.