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Main Authors: Bell, Oren, Kumar, Ashwin, Gill, Chris
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07079
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author Bell, Oren
Kumar, Ashwin
Gill, Chris
author_facet Bell, Oren
Kumar, Ashwin
Gill, Chris
contents Memory allocation is a fairly mature field of computer science. However, we challenge a prevailing assumption in the literature over the last 50 years which, if reconsidered, necessitates a fundamental reevaluation of many classical memory management algorithms. We pose a model where the allocation algorithm runs on host memory but allocates device memory and so incur the following constraint: the allocator can't read the memory it is allocating. This means we are unable to use boundary tags, which is a concept that has been ubiquitous in nearly every allocation algorithm. In this paper, we propose alternate algorithms to work around this constraint, and discuss in general the implications of this system model.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_07079
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Host-Based Allocators for Device Memory
Bell, Oren
Kumar, Ashwin
Gill, Chris
Software Engineering
Memory allocation is a fairly mature field of computer science. However, we challenge a prevailing assumption in the literature over the last 50 years which, if reconsidered, necessitates a fundamental reevaluation of many classical memory management algorithms. We pose a model where the allocation algorithm runs on host memory but allocates device memory and so incur the following constraint: the allocator can't read the memory it is allocating. This means we are unable to use boundary tags, which is a concept that has been ubiquitous in nearly every allocation algorithm. In this paper, we propose alternate algorithms to work around this constraint, and discuss in general the implications of this system model.
title Host-Based Allocators for Device Memory
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07079