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From: David Dawes <dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au>
Message-Id: <199512160505.QAA16774@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: growing X server processes
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 1995 16:05:04 +1100 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199512160237.CAA10865@exalt.x.org> from "Kaleb S. KEITHLEY" at Dec 15, 95 09:37:01 pm
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>> I guess that it should be interesting to find out exactly what is the
>> case or the profile that Kaleb mentioned in another posting.
>
>I don't know the details about what they did. Perhaps David Dawes,
>who I know follows this list, might elaborate; but I know that they're
>in the midst of their beta, compounded by the holiday, so now might not
>be the best time to get an answer.
>
>I expect that it's simply the case that they noticed observed patterns in
>the memory allocation profile, and they optimized the Xalloc allocator
>to do better for the most common allocation scenarios. I'm not at liberty
>to disclose their sources, you'll have to wait for them to release 3.1.3 
>to see what they did.

The Xalloc code we're using is in the 3.1.2 release, it just wasn't
enabled by default there.  Take a look at the file
xc/programs/Xserver/os/xalloc.c in the XFree86 3.1.2 source.  The comment
block in that file gives a description of what is being done.  It is
designed specifically for the X server's memory allocation requirements.
It is not used by the X clients, and is not intended as a general purpose
malloc (in fact is makes use of the system's malloc).

David