Configuring the Memory Allocator

The oneTBB memory allocator provides the following API functions and environment variables to configure its behavior:

• the scalable_allocation_command function instructs the allocator to perform a certain action, such as cleaning up its internal memory buffers.

• the scalable_allocation_mode function 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 to scalable_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_PAGES controls usage of huge pages for memory mapping.

• TBB_MALLOC_SET_HUGE_OBJECT_THRESHOLD defines 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.