gczhcm / memorypool

Thread safe, lock-free memory pool.

Memory Pool

I started working on this by forking https://github.com/cacay/MemoryPool. I needed a thread safe memory pool, and I wanted to avoid using locks if possible, so I forked his code and went to work.

However, it quickly became aparant that I could not properly modify his design to be lock-free. Odd bugs kept popping up, and it was clear to me that threads were stepping on each other. So, I ripped everything out of his design, and started over.

What's left is a project with similar function names, and a similar interface. Everything else has been completely redesigned, but is still used in much the same way. However, due to the lock-free nature of my code, it's significantly slower than his code.

So, in conclusion, if you want a fast memory pool, and aren't interested in thread safety, grab a copy of his code. If you want something that's thread safe, this should do the trick for you.

Usage

Just include the header in your project.

Syntax should look something like this:

MemoryPool<YourObject, 1000> pool; // Where 1000 is the number of objects you want to pre-allocate

YourObject *yo = pool.new_element( [args] ); // Where args are passed to the constructor of YourObject
pool.delete_element(yo); // Returns the element to the pool, and calls the destructor

You can also use the allocate() and deallocate() members directly if you're not interested in calling constructors and destructors.