Heap Allocation .

. Over time the heap will consist of alternate areas that are free and in use

. Heap manager is supposed to make use of the free space

. For efficiency reasons it may be helpful to handle small activations as a special case

. For each size of interest keep a linked list of free blocks of that size

Initializing data-structures may require allocating memory but where to allocate this memory. After doing type inference we have to do storage allocation. It will allocate some chunk of bytes. But in language like lisp it will try to give continuous chunk. The allocation in continuous bytes may lead to problem of fragmentation i.e. you may develop hole in process of allocation and de-allocation. Thus storage allocation of heap may lead us with many holes and fragmented memory which will make it hard to allocate continuous chunk of memory to requesting program. So we have heap mangers which manage the free space and allocation and de-allocation of memory. It would be efficient to handle small activations and activations of predictable size as a special case as described in the next slide. The various allocation and de-allocation techniques used will be discussed later.