Memanage

Memanage is a memory management framework designed to optimize dynamic memory allocation in software applications. It provides configurable allocation strategies, safety checks, and observability features to help developers manage memory more predictably. It is intended for use in systems programming, high-performance applications, and embedded environments where memory usage is tight.

The framework is modular, with pluggable allocator backends such as a buddy allocator, slab allocator, and region-based allocators. It supports per-thread caches, centralized arenas, and cross-thread synchronization strategies. It includes optional tracing garbage collection and reference counting with cycle-detection, allowing both manual and automatic memory management styles. It supports memory pools, guard pages, and bounds checking to detect overruns.

Features include API surfaces for allocation, deallocation, and resizing; memory safety features; leak detection; integration with profiling tools and dashboards; multi-language bindings; and runtime configuration for allocation limits and fragmentation mitigation. Built-in heuristics aim to reduce fragmentation and promote cache locality, while providing tunable performance characteristics.

Usage and history: Memanage is designed to be platform-agnostic and is used in research, education, and experimental deployments to illustrate memory management concepts. It aims to support multiple runtimes and languages, enabling experiments with different allocation strategies and garbage collection policies.

In summary, memanage emphasizes portability, safety, and observability.