An adaptive system for dynamic storage allocation

We describe a technique (the adaptive creation of free lists) for dynamic storage allocation that is particularly suited to situations in which the distribution of sizes of blocks requested has one or more sharp peaks. We describe a particular dynamic storage allocation system and the environment in which it runs, and give the results of some experiments to determine the usefulness of the technique in this system. Our experiments also tested the efficacy of a technique suggested by Knuth for improving the performance of similar systems.