Hoard: a Scalable Memory Allocator for Multithread Applications

Background For large parallel, multithreaded C and C++ applications such as web and database servers, the memory allocator is often a bottleneck that severely limits program performance and scalability on multiprocessor systems. Previous memory allocators have suffered from these problems in several forms, therefore severely effecting existing applications.

Invention Description Hoard is a fast, highly scalable memory allocator software library that largely avoids false sharing and is memory-efficient. It is the first allocator to simultaneously solve both performance and scalability problems that develop from false sharing and memory consumption, which many allocators have in one form or another.

Benefits

High performance Scalable Memory-efficient (low fragmentation)
Avoids false sharing Provable bounds memory consumption Low synchronization costs

Features

Drop-in replacement for malloc (no need to change source code)
Novel organization of a global heap and per-processor heaps Supported systems: Windows NT/2000/XP RedHat Linux 6.0 and above Solaris 7 and above IRIX AIX

Market Potential/Applications Hoard is an appealing product for companies that build and deploy large server technologies, especially as the amount of web services and available data increases. Users of Hoard include AOL, Novell, British Telecom, Coyote Systems (for their BEMEngine product), and bCandid Corporation (for their Typhoon & Twister servers). Open source projects using Hoard include the Bayonne GNU telephony server and the GNU Common C++ system.

Development Stage Commercial product

UT Researcher Emery Berger, Ph.D., Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin Kathryn S. McKinley, Ph.D., Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin Robert D. Blumofe, Akamai Technologies, Inc.


OTC Contact Information , Licensing Specialist

512-471-9055

Type of Offer: Licensing



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