Region-based memory management
memory allocation scheme for mixed sized objects
In computer science, region-based memory management is a type of memory management in which each allocated object is assigned to a region. A region, also called a partition, subpool, zone, arena, area, or memory context, is a collection of allocated objects that can be efficiently reallocated or deallocated all at once. Memory allocators using region-based managements are often called area allocators, and when they work by only "bumping" a single pointer, as bump allocators.
Like stack allocation, regions facilitate allocation and deallocation of memory with low overhead; but they are more flexible, allowing objects to live longer than the stack frame in which they were allocated. In typical implementations, all objects in a region are allocated in a single contiguous range of memory addresses, similarly to how stack frames are typically allocated.
In OS/360 and successors, the concept applies at two levels; each job runs within a contiguous partition or region. Storage allocation requests specify a subpool, and the application can free an entire subpool. Storage for a subpool is allocated from the region or partition in blocks that are a multiple of 2 KiB or 4 KiB that generally are not contiguous.
Example
As a simple example, consider the following C++ code, which implements a simple compile-time arena, and a simple data type consisting of a string and an integer value.
Implementation
Simple explicit regions are straightforward to implement; the following description is based on the work of Hanson.
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This entry incorporates text from “Region-based memory management” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.