Seems reasonable. One question. Do we know that FAST_ALLOC actually is faster than the built in allocator? It's pretty darned old and memory allocators are pretty modern now.
Nate On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 8:23 AM, Steve Reinhardt <ste...@gmail.com> wrote: > Brad pointed out that he habitually sets NO_FAST_ALLOC when compiling > m5.debug because the way FastAlloc handles memory allocation tends to be > tolerant of memory allocation errors (like reusing objects after they've > been deleted), and he's run across other people's bugs simply by running > with NO_FAST_ALLOC. I pointed out that he's abusing the purpose of a sticky > config variable by toggling it based on which binary he's compiling, but he > didn't seem to care ;-). > > He has a good point though, so what I would like to do is condition the use > of FastAlloc on whether DEBUG is set. While this sounds straightforward, > there are several minor complications I want to solicit input on before I do > this. (Though of course people are free to object with the basic premise if > they choose.) > > - It seems like there should be a way to force FastAlloc to be on even for > m5.debug, on the off chance you might want to debug FastAlloc itself, or if > there's some other bug that presents itself more readily in combination with > FastAlloc. I propose adding a FORCE_FAST_ALLOC sticky config var to do > this. > > - There's some code protected by '#if FAST_ALLOC_DEBUG' that is intended to > help debug memory leaks using FastAlloc. I've used it once or twice, but I > kind of doubt that anyone else has, and I'm sure it's not as good as using > valgrind or probably several other malloc debug packages. It seems > particuarly ironic to have debug code in a module that is disabled in > m5.debug, so I propose getting rid of this. That would also let us get rid > of the FAST_ALLOC_DEBUG scons sticky var, so we'd be at a wash in terms of > sticky var count. > > Any comments? > > Steve > _______________________________________________ > m5-dev mailing list > m5-dev@m5sim.org > http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/m5-dev > _______________________________________________ m5-dev mailing list m5-dev@m5sim.org http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/m5-dev
