How latency impacts performance - part 2

You can modify the original application to create a new version which runs faster.

Copy the original memory-latency1.c file to a new file named memory-latency2.c.

    

        
        
            cp memory-latency1.c memory-latency2.c
        
    

Add the following code after the first #define:

    

        
        
            ...
#define NODES                     1000000
#define SIMPLE_ALLOCATOR_SIZE     100000000UL

static void *start_ = NULL;
static void *cur_ = NULL;
static void *end_ = NULL;
static size_t counter_ = 0;

static void init_alloc() {
    if (start_ == NULL) {
        start_ = malloc(SIMPLE_ALLOCATOR_SIZE);
        if (start_ == NULL) {
            printf("Error allocating %ld bytes for allocator!", SIMPLE_ALLOCATOR_SIZE);
            exit(1);
        }
        memset(start_, 0, SIMPLE_ALLOCATOR_SIZE);
        cur_ = start_;
        end_ = start_ + SIMPLE_ALLOCATOR_SIZE;
        printf("start_: %p, end_: %p\n", start_, end_);
    }
}

static void* simple_alloc(size_t size) {
    if (cur_ + size <= end_) {
      void *ptr = cur_;
      cur_ += size;
      counter_++;
      return ptr;
    } else {
       printf("Error allocating %ld bytes!", size);
    }
    return NULL;
}
        
    

Replace the malloc() with the new function simple_alloc() in new_node():

    

        
        
            node_t *new_node(node_t *prev, const char *payload, size_t size) {
    node_t *n = (node_t *) simple_alloc(sizeof(node_t));
    if (n == NULL) {
    ...
}
        
    

The function free_nodes() call at the bottom of main() is not needed, you can remove it.

Add the init_alloc() in the start of main() and free(start_) at the end to free the buffer allocated by our simple allocator:

    

        
        
            int main() {
    init_alloc();
    ...

    free(start_);
}
        
    

Compile the new file:

    

        
        
            gcc -O3 -o memory-latency2 memory-latency2.c -Wall
        
    

Run the application:

    

        
        
            ./memory-latency2
        
    

The output will print the time taken to run the application:

    

        
        1000000 Nodes creation took 5374 us

        
    

Run the application again with perf using:

    

        
        
            perf record ./memory-latency2
        
    

When the application completes, generate the report using:

    

        
        
            perf report
        
    

The new report will be similar to:

    

        
        # Overhead  Command          Shared Object          Symbol                    
# ........  ...............  .....................  ..........................
#
    49.68%  memory-latency2  memory-latency2        [.] main
    29.03%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] __pi_clear_page
     3.38%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] free_unref_page
     3.32%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] rcu_all_qs
     3.18%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] folio_batch_move_lru
     3.01%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] __cond_resched
     2.89%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] get_page_from_freelist
     1.83%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] crng_make_state
     1.55%  memory-latency2  [kernel.kallsyms]      [k] ptep_clear_flush
     1.07%  memory-latency2  ld-linux-aarch64.so.1  [.] __tunable_get_val

        
    

Replacing the memory allocator for a simpler allocator gives a significant speed gain, more than 5x in this case.

This method of using a custom allocator is popular in performance-critical applications and libraries where the default system allocator is too generic or slow for the needs of the application.

A linear allocator like the one used here is one of the simplest memory allocators, and is popular in systems with known fixed size objects or known constrained size limits.

There are many more memory allocators for different sizes and quite a few of them are much faster than the default malloc(). To learn more about how a memory allocator works and write one yourself, please have a look at the dynamic memory allocator learning path .