[petsc-dev] Using multiple mallocs with PETSc

[Richard Mills]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Jed Brown <jed at jedbrown.org> wrote:

> Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
> >    Well it actually does something malloc doesn't do. It allows for
> >    multiple malloc backends,
>
> A malloc implementation can have multiple arenas.
>

Sure.  But are we confident that one of these multiple-arena malloc()s will
work for whatever combinations of different types of memory we'll need?
Maybe the answer is yes; if so, then we don't need to support multiple
mallocs, we just need to provide a mechanism to use one of these mallocs
and specify which kind of memory to prefer/require.  Though the
corresponding free() will need to be able to determine the appropriate kind
of memory without PETSc needing to tell it, as otherwise we need this hash
table or whatever...

--Richard


>
> >    and possibly allows for other things like tracking how often the
> >    malloced space is accessed.
>
> How?
>
> >    And keeps enough information for migration of malloced space.
>
> What does that mean?
>
>
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