User:Egberts/Comparison of malloc algorithms

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In computer programming, malloc and its related memory allocation functions are fundamental components of dynamic memory management in C and C-derived languages. Over time, numerous implementations and variants of malloc have been developed, each with different performance characteristics, memory usage patterns, and concurrency strategies. T

This article compares major malloc variants—including standard library implementations, custom allocators, and platform-specific versions—highlighting their design goals, internal mechanisms, and use cases in modern computing environments.

Malloc Taxonomy

Major Variants

The following table gives basic details the prominent variants of malloc function set.

Details Malloc variant name	Programming Language	License	Developer(s)	year developed	Website	Repository	Whitepaper
bmalloc	C#?	Proprietary	Apple / WebKit contributors	2013	[github.com/WebKit]
bsmalloc	C	MIT	Eli Rosenthal	2017	[github.com/ezrosent/allocators-rs]
ctmalloc	C++	BSD-3-Clause	Sanjay Ghemawat et al. (Google)	2008			Tor Browser Bundle^[1]
dangless-malloc	C	BSD-3-Clause	Gabor Ózar (with collaborators)	2022	[gaborozar.me/]	[github.com/shdnx/dangless-malloc]	DangZero: Efficient Use-After-Free Detection^[2]
dlmalloc	C	MIT	Doug Lea	1996	[dmalloc.com]	[github.com/DenizThatMenace/dlmalloc]	Dmalloc Tutorial^[3]
elfmalloc	Rust	MIT Apache 2.0	Eli Rosenthal	2017	[github.com/ezrosent]	[github.com/ezrosent/allocators-rs]	elfmalloc Design^[4]
hardened_malloc	C	MIT	Daniel Micay for GrapheneOS	2024		[github.com/GrapheneOS/hardened_malloc]
hmalloc			Tianlin Li, Yiping Yao, Wenjie Tang, Zhongwei Lin	2019			A Hybrid Scalable and Lock-Free Memory^[5]
Hoard	C	Apache 2.0	Emery D. Berger, Kathryn S. McKinley, Robert D. Blumofe, Paul R. Wilson	1999	[hoard.org]	[github.com/emeryberger/Hoard]	Hoard: a scalable memory allocator for multithreaded applications^[6]
italloc	C++	BSD-3-Clause	Google	2013	https://github.com/r-lyeh-archived/ltalloc	https://code.google.com/archive/p/ltalloc/
jemalloc	C	GPL-3 with the GCC exception	Jason Evans of Facebook	2005		[github.com/jemalloc/]	A Scalable Concurrent malloc(3) Implementation for FreeBSD^[7]
jemalloc2	C	MIT	Jason Evans of Facebook	2014		[ https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc]	A Scalable Concurrent malloc(3) Implementation for FreeBSD^[8]
kmalloc	C	BSD-2-Clause	Chris Kingsley	1982		[github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementation]	EARL: An Integrated Circuit Design Language^[9]
libumem	C	CDDL	Jonathan Adams, Jeff Bonwick (kernel slab), Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SMI)	2001	[[1]]	[[2]]	Magazines and Vmem: Extending the Slab Allocator to Many CPUs and Arbitrary Resources^[10]
llmalloc	C++	MIT	Paul Liétar, Theodore Butler, Sylvan Clebsch, Sophia Drossopoulou, Juliana Franco, Matthew J. Parkinson, Alex Shamis, Christoph M. Wintersteiger, David Chisnall	2019	https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1ihjmmc/llmalloc_a_low_latency_oriented_thread_caching/	[github.com/akhin/llmalloc]	snmalloc: a message passing allocator^[11]
lrmalloc	C++	MIT	Ricardo Leite, Ricardo Rocha	2018	[website]	[github.com/ricleite/lrmalloc]	A Modern and Competitive Lock-Free Dynamic Memory Allocator^[12]
Malloc-ng	C	Apache 2.0	Apple	2015		[github.com/apple/opensource]
mimalloc	C	MIT	Daan Leijen	2015	[microsoft.github.io/mimalloc]	[github.com/microsoft/mimalloc]	Mimalloc: Free List Sharding in Action^[13]
Mmap-malloc	C	MIT Apache 2.0	Eli Rosenthal	2017		https://github.com/ezrosent/allocators-rs/tree/master/mmap-alloc
mspace	C	MIT	Doug Lea	1997	https://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/html/malloc.html	https://android.googlesource.com/platform/bionic/%2B/d206b56/libc/upstream-dlmalloc/malloc.c	https://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/html/malloc.html
mtmalloc	C	Proprietary	IBM	2005	https://www.research.ibm.com/mtmalloc		https://research.ibm.com/publications/scalable-lock-free-dynamic-memory-allocation--1
NBBS	C	???	Romolo Marotta, Mauro Ianni, Alessandro Pellegrini, Francesco Quaglia	2022	https://github.com/wuwenbin/buddy2	https://github.com/HPDCS/NBBS	https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2021.3060393
nbmalloc	C Ada	GPLv2	Anders Gidenstam	2004	https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/befb/47996062d62ca4d3f77a194e66d3215d85d9.pdf	https://github.com/andgi/NBAda/blob/master-Ada95/src/Lock-Free_Sets/nbada-lock_free_sets.adb	https://www.cse.chalmers.se/~tsigas/papers/Allocating%20Memory%20in%20a%20Lock-Free%20Manner%20-%20ESA05.pdf
nedmalloc	C	Zlib	Niall Douglas	2003	https://github.com/ned14/nedmalloc	https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/nedmalloc	https://github.com/ned14/nedmalloc/blob/master/compat/nedmalloc/Readme.txt
Nextgen-malloc	C	MIT	Ruihao Li, Qinzhe Wu, Krishna Kavi, Gayatri Mehta, Neeraja J. Yadwadkar, and Lizy K. John	2023	https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark%3A/67531/metadc2201586/	https://github.com/richfelker/mallocng-draft	https://sigops.org/s/conferences/hotos/2023/papers/li.pdf
omalloc	C	Beerware	Otto Moerbeek	2008		https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/omalloc
ottomalloc	C++	MIT	Amit L. Gupta, Google	2018		https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/ottomalloc	https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2009/otto-malloc.pdf
partitionalloc	C	BSD-3-Clause	David Blaikie, Google	2019	https://www.chromium.org/developers/base-newsletters/2022q3/#standalone-partitionalloc	https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/third_party/partition_alloc	https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/memory-management
phkmalloc			Poul-Henning Kamp	1993	https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/lib/libc/stdlib/malloc.c?view=markup	https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/phkmalloc
Pim-malloc	C/C++	Apache 2.0	Dongjae Lee, Bongjoon Hyun, Minsoo Rhu	2018	https://pmem.io/pmdk/	https://github.com/intel/pmdk	https://arxiv.org/html/2505.13002v1
portableumem	C	BSD-3-Clause	Minsoo Rhu, Bongjoon Hyun	2015		https://github.com/pmem/portableumem
ptmalloc	C	MIT	Wolfram Gloger	2001		https://github.com/hustfisher/ptmalloc
ptmalloc2	C	GPL-2	Wolfram Gloger	2004	https://github.com/hustfisher/ptmalloc	https://github.com/bminor/glibc
ptmalloc3	C	GPL-2	Wolfram Gloger	2010	https://github.com/bminor/glibc	https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/ptmalloc
rpmalloc	C	MIT	Mattias Johnson	2015		https://github.com/mjansson/rpmalloc
rustmalloc	Rust	MIT	Rust community	2019		https://github.com/gnzlbg/malloc
s2malloc	C++	Apache2 Affero	Ruizhe Wang, Meng Xu, N. Asokan	2024	https://dustri.org/b/paper-notes-s2malloc.html	https://ssg-research.github.io/platsec/memallo	https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.01894
scalloc	C	BSD-2-Clause	Martin Aigner	2015	http://scalloc.cs.uni-salzburg.at/	https://github.com/cksystemsgroup/scalloc/tree/master/src	https://www.cs.uni-salzburg.at/~ck/content/publications/conferences/OOPSLA15-Scalloc.pdf
scudo	C++	Apache 2.0	Christoph Kirsch	2015		https://github.com/google/scudo
secure_malloc	C	MIT	Ana Sokolova	2013	http://thread.gmane.org/	gmane.comp.encryption.openssl.user/51243?resub=1
semalloc	C++	Apache2 Affero	Michael Lippautz	2024	https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/items/fcf3efc1-93bb-4a90-96d3-b5d0e30650c6	https://github.com/ssg-research/semalloc	https://ssg-research.github.io/platsec/memallo
sfmalloc	C	MIT	Sangmin Seo, SNU Korea	2017	https://github.com/jeffhammond/sfmalloc	https://github.com/lloyd/sfmalloc	https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/
SlimGuard	C	MIT	Stella Bitchebe, Yves Kone, Pierre Olivier, Jalil Boukhobza, David Bromberg, Daniel Hagimont, Alain Tchana	2017	https://ssrg-vt.github.io/SlimGuard/	https://github.com/ssrg-vt/SlimGuard/	https://www.ssrg.ece.vt.edu/papers/middleware19-slimguard.pdf
smmalloc	C++	MIT	Sergey Makeev	2016	https://github.com/terrelln/smmalloc	https://github.com/SergeyMakeev/smmalloc
snmalloc	C	MIT	Nathan Kurz, Marthew Parkinson	2015	https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/azure-security-privacy/open-source/	https://github.com/microsoft/snmalloc	https://github.com/microsoft/snmalloc/blob/main/snmalloc.pdf
spmalloc	C	GPLv2	Stephen Peijnik	2005		https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/spmalloc/
ssmalloc	C	MIT	Ran Liu & Haibo Chen	2012		github.com/Naruil/SSMalloc	https://apsys2012.kaist.ac.kr/media/papers/apsys2012-final27.pdf
Streamflow	C++	MIT	Christos Antonopoulos, Scott Schneider	2017	http://www.cs.wm.edu/streamflow	https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/old/streamflow	https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1133956.1133968
Super-malloc	C	MIT	Anthony Lee (and collaborators)	2018			https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~angelee/archive/cse539/spr18/papers/supermalloc.pdf
tbbmalloc	C++	Apache 2.0	Intel	2007	https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/docs/help/tbb_userguide/Memory_Allocator.html	https://github.com/oneapi-src/oneTBB	https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/oneapi/onetbb.html
tcmalloc	C++	Apache 2.0	Sanjay Ghemawat and Paul Menage (Google)	2006	https://github.com/google/tcmalloc	https://github.com/emeryberger/Malloc-Implementations/tree/master/allocators/tcmalloc/google-perftools-0.91
TLSF	C	GPL2 LGPL	Miguel Masmano Tello, Herman ten Brugge, Adam Scislowicz	2008	https://medium.com/@andrew_johnson_4/malloc-algorithms-memory-management-in-lm-5531cde74bc8	https://github.com/japaric/tlsf	http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/files/papers/spe_2008.pdf
xmalloc			Xiaohuang Huang, Christopher I. Rodrigues, Stephen Jones, Ian Buck, Wen-mei Hwu	2010			http://impact.crhc.illinois.edu/Shared/Papers/Huang-2011.pdf

History

Speed Comparison

==

References

External links

Template:Malloc algorithms

[[Category:Computing comparisons|Malloc algorithms]

[1] thub.com/iSECPartners "Tor Browser Bundle". {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

[2] "DangZero: Efficient Use-After-Free Detection" (PDF).

[3] "Dmalloc Tutorial".

[4] "elfmalloc Design".

[5] "A Hybrid Scalable and Lock-Free Memory".

[6] "Hoard: a scalable memory allocator for multithreaded applications".

[7] "A Scalable Concurrent malloc(3) Implementation for FreeBSD" (PDF).

[8] "A Scalable Concurrent malloc(3) Implementation for FreeBSD" (PDF).

[9] "EARL: An Integrated Circuit Design Language" (PDF).

[10] "Magazines and Vmem: Extending the Slab Allocator to Many CPUs and Arbitrary Resources".

[11] "snmalloc: a message passing allocator".

[12] "A Modern and Competitive Lock-Free Dynamic Memory Allocator". {{cite web}}: line feed character in |title= at position 25 (help)

[13] "Mimalloc: Free List Sharding in Action".

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