Here's another idea: Use unmanaged memory and manage the memory yourself.
See http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/pointers.asp and especially pay attention to the unmanaged Memory class (in C#). Arun Hugh Williams writes: > When you allocate large objects they go on the Large Object Heap. > (Aside: the predominant literature says a "large object" is defined as > over 85,000 bytes; some sources say 20,000 but my empirical testing says > 85k. Could this be a server/workstation difference?) > > This heap gets collected much less often than any of the "managed" > generations (0-2). Furthermore, it never gets compacted because of the > cost of relocating objects that large -- so you are facing a highly > fragmented large object heap if you traffic heavily in objects of > unusual size. > > Allocation requires contiguous blocks of memory -- which means going > back to the well if a contiguous block is unavailable, so memory will > tend to grow if the GC is unable to keep up with the app logic. > > Microsoft's PSS response to me was basically 1) reuse the large objects, > or 2) make sure my objects are the same size. Assuming neither of these > is feasible, and there's no way to force the large object heap to > compact during collection, it sounds like this addresses a class of > problems that .NET just can't answer yet... > > Any thoughts? > -- Arun Bhalla
