How to avoid successive deallocations/allocations in C++?

Question

Consider the following code:

class A
{
    B* b; // an A object owns a B object

    A() : b(NULL) { } // we don\'t know what b will be when constructing A

             


        

Answer 1

A quick test of Martin York's assertion that this is a premature optimisation, and that new/delete are optimised well beyond the ability of mere programmers to improve. Obviously the questioner will have to time his own code to see whether avoiding new/delete helps him, but it seems to me that for certain classes and uses it will make a big difference:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

int g_construct = 0;
int g_destruct = 0;

struct A {
    std::vector<int> vec;
    A (int a, int b) : vec((a*b) % 2) { ++g_construct; }
    ~A() { 
        ++g_destruct; 
    }
};

int main() {
    const int times = 10*1000*1000;
    #if DYNAMIC
        std::cout << "dynamic\n";
        A *x = new A(1,3);
        for (int i = 0; i < times; ++i) {
            delete x;
            x = new A(i,3);
        }
    #else
        std::cout << "automatic\n";
        char x[sizeof(A)];
        A* yzz = new (x) A(1,3);
        for (int i = 0; i < times; ++i) {
            yzz->~A();
            new (x) A(i,3);
        }
    #endif

    std::cout << g_construct << " constructors and " << g_destruct << " destructors\n";
}

$ g++ allocperf.cpp -oallocperf -O3 -DDYNAMIC=0 -g && time ./allocperf
automatic
10000001 constructors and 10000000 destructors

real    0m7.718s
user    0m7.671s
sys     0m0.030s

$ g++ allocperf.cpp -oallocperf -O3 -DDYNAMIC=1 -g && time ./allocperf
dynamic
10000001 constructors and 10000000 destructors

real    0m15.188s
user    0m15.077s
sys     0m0.047s

This is roughly what I expected: the GMan-style (destruct/placement new) code takes twice as long, and is presumably doing twice as much allocation. If the vector member of A is replaced with an int, then the GMan-style code takes a fraction of a second. That's GCC 3.

$ g++-4 allocperf.cpp -oallocperf -O3 -DDYNAMIC=1 -g && time ./allocperf
dynamic
10000001 constructors and 10000000 destructors

real    0m5.969s
user    0m5.905s
sys     0m0.030s

$ g++-4 allocperf.cpp -oallocperf -O3 -DDYNAMIC=0 -g && time ./allocperf
automatic
10000001 constructors and 10000000 destructors

real    0m2.047s
user    0m1.983s
sys     0m0.000s

This I'm not so sure about, though: now the delete/new takes three times as long as the destruct/placement new version.

[Edit: I think I've figured it out - GCC 4 is faster on the 0-sized vectors, in effect subtracting a constant time from both versions of the code. Changing (a*b)%2 to (a*b)%2+1 restores the 2:1 time ratio, with 3.7s vs 7.5]

Note that I've not taken any special steps to correctly align the stack array, but printing the address shows it's 16-aligned.

Also, -g doesn't affect the timings. I left it in accidentally after I was looking at the objdump to check that -O3 hadn't completely removed the loop. That pointers called yzz because searching for "y" didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped. But I've just re-run without it.

Answer 2

Simply reserve the memory required for b (via a pool or by hand) and reuse it each time you delete/new instead of reallocating each time.

Example :

class A
{
    B* b; // an A object owns a B object
    bool initialized;
public:
    A() : b( malloc( sizeof(B) ) ), initialized(false) { } // We reserve memory for b
    ~A() { if(initialized) destroy(); free(b); } // release memory only once we don't use it anymore

    void calledVeryOften(…)
    {
        if (initialized)
            destroy();

        create();
    }

 private:

    void destroy() { b->~B(); initialized = false; } // hand call to the destructor
    void create( param1, param2, param3, param4 )
    {
        b = new (b) B( param1, param2, param3, param4 ); // in place new : only construct, don't allocate but use the memory that the provided pointer point to
        initialized = true;
    }

};

In some cases a Pool or ObjectPool could be a better implementation of the same idea.

The construction/destruction cost will then only be dependante on the constructor and destructor of the B class.

Answer 3

Just have a pile of previously used Bs, and re-use them.

Answer 4

I'd go with boost::scoped_ptr here:

class A: boost::noncopyable
{
    typedef boost::scoped_ptr<B> b_ptr;
    b_ptr pb_;

public:

    A() : pb_() {}

    void calledVeryOften( /*…*/ )
    {
        pb_.reset( new B( params )); // old instance deallocated
        // safely use *pb_ as reference to instance of B
    }
};

No need for hand-crafted destructor, A is non-copyable, as it should be in your original code, not to leak memory on copy/assignment.

I'd suggest to re-think the design though if you need to re-allocate some inner state object very often. Look into Flyweight and State patterns.

Answer 5

Like the others have already suggested: Try placement new..

Here is a complete example:

#include <new>
#include <stdio.h>

class B
{
  public:
  int dummy;

  B (int arg)
  {
    dummy = arg;
    printf ("C'Tor called\n");
  }

  ~B ()
  {
    printf ("D'tor called\n");
  }
};


void called_often (B * arg)
{
  // call D'tor without freeing memory:
  arg->~B();

  // call C'tor without allocating memory:
  arg = new(arg) B(10);
}

int main (int argc, char **args)
{
  B test(1);
  called_often (&test);
}

Answer 6

How about allocating the memory for B once (or for it's biggest possible variant) and using placement new?

A would store char memB[sizeof(BiggestB)]; and a B*. Sure, you'd need to manually call the destructors, but no memory would be allocated/deallocated.

   void* p = memB;
   B* b = new(p) SomeB();
   ...
   b->~B();   // explicit destructor call when needed.