On 9/22/2010 12:49 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:
Dear Boost Devs,
I am hoping to gain feedback on an ISO C++ standard library proposal I hope to submit. It consists of a rationale (http://mallocv2.wordpress.com/) which shows how growth in RAM capacity is exponentially outgrowing the growth in RAM access speed. The consequences are profound: computer software which has always been written under the assumption of scarcity of RAM capacity will need to be retargeted to assume the scarcity of RAM access speed instead. [...] The proposal comes in two parts: (i) The C proposal (http://mallocv2.wordpress.com/the-c-proposal-text/) which extends the classic 1979 malloc API to enable realloc() to speculatively attempt in-place allocation resizing and (ii) the C++ proposal (http://mallocv2.wordpress.com/the-cpp-proposal-text/) which extends std::allocator<> with batch allocation and deallocation member functions along with a reallocate() member function. These work much as expected and are intended for STL implementations - I have given a sample std::vector<>::reserve() implementation for the Dinkumware STL which attempts an in-place extension before performing a move construction of the vector contents.
I am going to guess that these member functions will be fairly uncontroversial - reallocate() in particular has been in the SGI STL for a while, though in an unhelpful form which is basically a realloc() wrapper. [...]
Are you familiar with Ion Gaztanaga's "allocplus" proposal [1]? Without actually yet reading your proposal, yours and Ion's sound similar, or at least have some overlap, based on the above description. There is also a similar, earlier proposal from Howard Hinnant referenced in [1]. Apologies if these aren't actually relevant and/or you're already familiar with these proposals. - Jeff [1] http://www.drivehq.com/web/igaztanaga/allocplus/