Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ames!lll-tis!ptsfa!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Memory Fragmentation Question
Message-ID: <558@sugar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 06:40:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: sugar.558
Posted: Mon Aug 24 06:40:15 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Aug-87 01:42:27 EDT
References: <556489503.138.te07.linesville.ibm032@andrew.cmu.edu>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 13

The Amiga already coalesces adjacent chunks, and you can't move other chunks
around to free up space because on a 68000 without an MMU fixed adresses is
all you got. The Mac uses a double indirection system to offset this, at some
cost in performance: most programs lock memory anyway and don't use their
handles... so you still have the problem.

On the other hand, I haven't noticed much of a fragmentation problem in normal
usage. I have a tool I call "Fuel Gauge" that shows me how my free chunks are
distributed, and while the low 100K or so of RAM is badly fragmented above that
there are usually just a couple of small chunks and one or maybe two real
big ones.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter (I said, NO PHOTOS!)