Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!SIAC
From: SIAC@applelink.apple.com (Eric Ulevik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Memory manager query
Message-ID: <545@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 6 Feb 89 21:07:44 GMT
References: <868@fornax.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 21

In article <868@fornax.UUCP> mcdonald@fornax.UUCP (Ken Mcdonald) writes:
> I want to write an application that will make heavy use of relocateable
> blocks--as in, HEAVY.  In degenerate cases, I could be running about
> 10,000 relocateable blocks/250k of heap space. 

Well, I once tried to store lots of data in relocatable blocks. On a Mac 
Plus, with over 1,000 or so relocatable blocks, the program slowed down by 
about 3 times, due to all the block shuffling that the memory 
manager was doing.

You don't want to do this. The memory manager won't handle that much data.

I recommend you perform your own memory management on a large fixed block 
of memory. You may or may not want to allow relocatable blocks. Also, some 
useful references to quick methods of dealing with lots of little pieces 
of data can be found in the Smalltalk world. There are some good 
algorithms for dealing with this kind of problem - I recall what Actor (a 
Smalltalk-like language running under Microsoft Windows) does.

Eric Ulevik
email: SIAC@applelink.apple.com