From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-06-02T16:57:54+09:00
Subject: Re: How can I pin a Ruby object in memory?


On Jun 1, 2006, at 8:23 PM, John Lam wrote:

> So I would guess that Ruby memory allocation is relatively expensive?
> Certainly nowhere near as fast as allocating memory off of the "end"
> of the heap or the stack, right? Does it have to search a free list of
> blocks itself or does it delegate allocation to the system's malloc()
> implementation?

Speaking without any knowledge of ruby's internals I imagine it's  
actually is just allocating from the end of some pre-allocated buffer  
until it reaches the end of the buffer. So if you never run out of  
room in the buffer the allocation is just incrementing a pointer.  
When you reach the end you do the first GC and subsequent allocations  
have to search the freelist for a big enough chunk.