Core · Module 4 · Lesson 6 of 9

Arena and Pool Memory Allocators

Bypass general-purpose malloc overhead by designing O(1) linear bump arenas and fixed-size chunk pool allocators.

ProAbout 16 minutes

By the end you can

Construct a linear bump allocator (arena) with alignment-aware pointer advancement
Reset entire memory arenas in O(1) time without individual free calls
Build a fixed-size pool allocator using an intrusive embedded free-list
Eliminate heap metadata overhead and external memory fragmentation

Builds on Dynamic Memory Lifecycles and Leak Prevention.

01 · A question first

Why do game engines and web servers avoid calling malloc and free in their hot loops? And how can a custom allocator allocate memory in two CPU instructions and free ten thousand objects in a single clock cycle without memory leaks?

Make a guess before you read on.

02 · The idea

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What's inside

Start with the problem
How the idea works
Why it is correct
What it costs
Pitfalls and variations
Where it is used