Abstract
Dynamic storage allocation (DSA) is a field fairly well studied for a long time as a basic problem of system software area. Due to memory fragmentation problem of DSA and its unpredictable worst case execution time, real-time system designers have believed that DSA may not be promising for real-time application service. Recently, the need for an efficient DSA algorithm is widely discussed and the algorithm is considered to be very important in the real-time system. This paper proposes an efficient DSA algorithm called QSB (quick semi-buddy) which is designed to be suitable for real-time environment. QSB scheme effectively maintains free lists based on quick-fit approach to quickly accommodate small and frequent memory requests, and the other free lists devised with adaptation upon a typical binary buddy mechanism for bigger requests in harmony for the .improved performance. Comprehensive simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms QHF which is known to be effective in terms of memory fragmentation up to about 16%. Furthermore, the memory allocation failure ratio is significantly decreased and the worst case execution time is predictable.
