Mesa Looks At Switching To Jemalloc For Faster Performance

Marek Olšák is looking at using the jemalloc memory allocator for faster GLSL compilation and ultimately could redirect all malloc/calloc/realloc/free calls in Mesa to using jemalloc.

Jemalloc is a memory allocator designed to be very scalable and is notably used within Firefox, FreeBSD, and many other deployments elsewhere -- including at Facebook. Marek realized that the time of compiling shaders from GLSL to GCN bytecode could be reduced by about 10% if switching from using glibc to jemalloc for memory allocations. Those wishing to learn more about jemalloc can see the GitHub page.

With being ~10% quicker for GLSL compilation, Marek is looking at potentially redirecting all of the memory allocation calls to using jemalloc. The RFC patch for introducing jemalloc in Mesa can be found via the Mesa-dev mailing list.