Hoard Implementation
By Hsuan-Hao Chen & Patrick Harris.
As part of our course work for CSC469, we implemented a parallel memory allocator, based on the Hoard allocator.1 We sought to understand the various strategies that can be used to improve memory performance on a modern multi-processor system. The design of our parallel memory allocator mainly follows the design laid out in the Hoard paper. In keeping with the Hoard design, we trade “increased (but bounded) memory consumption for reduced synchronization costs.”1 Hoard also seeks to avoid false sharing,1 through seperating the memory blocks which different threads access.
The Hoard design avoids costly synchronization of the whole heap. Rather, synchronization is on a per processor heap level. So, a different thread could satisfy it’s allocations while other operations are going on. Since a different portion of the heap is accessed, there are no false sharing issues.