Configuring the Memory Allocator
The oneTBB memory allocator provides the following API functions and
environment variables to configure its behavior:
- thescalable_allocation_commandfunction instructs the allocator to perform a certain action, such as cleaning up its internal memory buffers.
- thescalable_allocation_modefunction allows an application to set certain parameters for the memory allocator, such as an option to map memory in huge pages or define a recommended heap size. These settings take effect until modified by another call toscalable_allocation_mode.
Some of the memory allocator parameters can also be set via system
environment variables. It can be useful to adjust the behavior without
modifying application source code, to ensure that a setting takes effect
as early as possible, or to avoid explicit dependency on the oneTBB
allocator binaries. The following environment variables are recognized:
- TBB_MALLOC_USE_HUGE_PAGEScontrols usage of huge pages for memory mapping.
- TBB_MALLOC_SET_HUGE_OBJECT_THRESHOLDdefines the lower bound for the size (bytes), that is interpreted as huge and not released during regular cleanup operations.
These variables only take effect at the time the memory manager is
initialized; later environment changes are ignored. A call to
scalable_allocation_mode
overrides the effect of the corresponding
environment variable.