`Reconsidering Custom Memory Allocation`

[Dejan Lekic via Digitalmars-d]

Yesterday I stumbled upon this excellent research paper:

Reconsidering Custom Memory Allocation - (PDF: 
http://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/berger-oopsla2002.pdf )

It got the "Most Influential OOPSLA Paper Award" in 2012.

Abstract (for those lazy to read it):

"Custom memory management is often used in systems software for 
the purpose of decreasing the cost of allocation and tightly 
controlling memory footprint of the software. Until 2002, it was 
taken for granted that application-specific memory allocators 
were superior to general purpose libraries. Berger, Zorn and 
McKinley’s paper demonstrated through a rigorous empirical study 
that this assumption is not well-founded, and gave insights into 
the reasons why general purpose allocators can outperform 
handcrafted ones. The paper also stands out for the quality of 
its empirical methodology."