noalloc

Noalloc is a research project that aims to develop an operating system that minimizes memory allocation. The project was started in 2019 by a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego.

The primary goal of noalloc is to eliminate the overhead of memory allocation and deallocation, which are common operations in many programming languages. Memory allocation typically involves searching for a free block of memory, updating memory management data structures, and handling errors that may occur during the allocation process. These operations can be slow and inefficient, especially in systems with high memory usage or low memory availability.

Noalloc proposes to eliminate memory allocation by reserving a large contiguous block of memory at startup and using it to store all data. This approach requires careful management of data layout and access patterns to ensure that the reserved memory is used efficiently. Noalloc's designers argue that this approach can provide significant performance improvements in applications that require rapid data access, such as databases and file systems.

To achieve this performance improvement, noalloc relies on a combination of techniques, including compiler modifications, binary rewriting, and dynamic memory management. Researchers have demonstrated promising results for a variety of workloads, but the project is still in its early stages, and much work remains to be done to fully realize the potential of noalloc.

The noalloc project is ongoing, and the results are being published in various research papers and conferences. While the project is specific to memory allocation, it may have broader implications for the design of future operating systems and runtime environments.