Down memory lane: Two decades with the slab allocator -- Bryan Cantrill скачать в хорошем качестве

Down memory lane: Two decades with the slab allocator -- Bryan Cantrill

Talk by Bryan Cantrill. Memory allocation is an important aspect of any dynamic software system, but it's especially essential in an operating system kernel -- a program that is expected to run continuously and in perpetuity. Two decades ago, I fell in love with the slab allocator from Sun Microsystems, ultimately plotting the course of my nascent career to work with its creator, Jeff Bonwick. As a young software engineer, I quickly learned the power of its incredible debugging capabilities, and came to appreciate the subtle beauty of its implementation. As the years passed, the slab allocator saw important changes: it was extended deeper into the virtual memory system; it was brought to user-level and made available to applications; and it was liberated from its proprietary shackles and made open source. With each of these changes, a new generation of engineers came to the slab allocator, bringing their own insights and making their own significant contributions. Two decades after I first fell in love with it, the slab allocator remains at the heart of the systems I work on -- and is as compelling as ever. In this talk, I will describe some of the highs (and a few of the lows) of my two decade relationship with this system, highlighting in particular those aspects of its craftsmanship that continue to inspire the ways we build new systems.