Simulator

Understand how simple memory allocators manage free space using a simulation program. Learn to apply different allocation policies and list ordering to observe how memory is allocated and freed on a heap. Explore coalescing and random or specific operation sequences to gain practical insight into allocator behavior.

We'll cover the following...

This program, malloc.py, allows you to see how a simple memory allocator works. Here are the options that you have at your disposal:

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s SEED, --seed=SEED  the random seed
  -S HEAPSIZE, --size=HEAPSIZE
                        size of the heap
  -b BASEADDR, --baseAddr=BASEADDR
                        base address of heap
  -H HEADERSIZE, --headerSize=HEADERSIZE
                        size of the header
  -a ALIGNMENT, --alignment=ALIGNMENT
                        align allocated units to size; -1->no align
  -p POLICY, --policy=POLICY
                        list search (BEST, WORST, FIRST)
  -l ORDER, --listOrder=ORDER
                        list order (ADDRSORT, SIZESORT+, SIZESORT-, INSERT-FRONT, INSERT-BACK)
  -C, --coalesce        coalesce the free list?
  -n OPSNUM, --numOps=OPSNUM
                        number of random ops to generate
  -r OPSRANGE, --range=OPSRANGE
                        max alloc size
  -P OPSPALLOC, --percentAlloc=OPSPALLOC
                        percent of ops that are allocs
  -A OPSLIST, --allocList=OPSLIST
                        instead of random, list of ops (+10,-0,etc)
  -c, --compute         compute answers for me

One way to use it is to have the ...