https://engineering.fb.com/2026/03/02/data-infrastructure/investing-in-infrastructure-metas-renewed-commitment-to-jemalloc/ #Meta #memoryallocation #infrastructureupdates #technews #HackerNews #ngated
Jemalloc Un-Abandoned by Meta
#HackerNews #Jemalloc #Meta #Abandonment #TechInfrastructure #OpenSource #MemoryManagement
At $dayjob, we have an embedded #Linux device that is periodically running low on memory. It's using the default (#glibc) allocator.
No leaks, and lowering MALLOC_MMAP_THRESHOLD_ made the problem go away. So: memory fragmentation.
With glibc, I'm sure that's no surprise to anyone "Use #jemalloc", right?
Sure, some do, but I don't want to use a hammer that big without trying to understand the problem first. Jemalloc being effectively end of life also doesn't really thrill me.
1/5
Trying to further improve #swad, and as I'm still unhappy with the amount of memory needed ....
Well, this little and special custom #allocator (only dealing with equally sized objects on a single thread and actively preventing #fragmentation) reduces the resident set in my tests by 5 to 10 MiB, compared to "pooling" with linked lists in whatever #FreeBSD's #jemalloc serves me. At least something. 🙈
https://github.com/Zirias/poser/blob/master/src/lib/core/objectpool.c
The resident set now stabilizes at 79MiB after many runs of my somewhat heavy jmeter test simulating 1000 distinct clients.
If you want to understand the life cycle of software, this history of jemalloc is not a bad start
Remember: there is no bad or good here, and there is no intentionality. To assume there should have been a different outcome would be presumptuous.
There just “is”. Not everybody understands this.

The jemalloc memory allocator was first conceived in early 2004, and hasbeen in public use for about 20 years now. Thanks to the nature of open source software licensing,jemalloc will remain publicly available indefinitely. But active upstream development has come to anend. This post briefly desc...
Uff!
"jemalloc Postmortem", Jason Evans (https://jasone.github.io/2025/06/12/jemalloc-postmortem/).
Via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44264958
On Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/s/thpska/jemalloc_postmortem
#Malloc #Libc #jemalloc #MemoryManagement #Retrospective #OpenSource #FOSS #Facebook #Meta #FreeBSD #Linux #Windows #Allocators

The jemalloc memory allocator was first conceived in early 2004, and hasbeen in public use for about 20 years now. Thanks to the nature of open source software licensing,jemalloc will remain publicly available indefinitely. But active upstream development has come to anend. This post briefly desc...