Hi

[H. Peter Anvin]

Dan Maas wrote:

> 
> One more question regarding the allocator- I would like to keep my system
> running continuously for quite a while. Assuming there are no memory leaks
> in my code, am I guaranteed that the arena won't grow without bound? i.e. if
> I allocate and free many blocks of memory over a long period of time, but I
> never have more than X bytes of memory allocated at once, is there
> guaranteed to be a number Y such that the arena size will never exceed Y
> bytes? (where Y is hopefully not too much greater than X of course =).
> 


I *think* a buddy system allocator is bounded to 2:1 internal 
fragmentation and 2:1 external fragmentation, for a worst-case bound of 
Y < 4X, but it's way too late at night for me to actually work out the 
math in my head.

	-hpa