You've Got Mail.........DM42L

[Thomas Okken]

(03-20-2016 10:48 PM)Paul Dale Wrote:  

(03-20-2016 05:23 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  In any case, Free42 uses RAM at about twice the rate of the 42S, because variables take up 16 bytes instead of 8, programs are stored in a less compact format, and system overhead is larger.

Thomas, any idea as to the effort require to make Free42 memory use more compatible with an embedded system? Not so much the extra RAM uses mentioned above, which aren't a major issue. More the freer allocation/freeing of RAM and the possible fragmentation risk.

- Pauli

Hi Pauli,

I'm not sure what you mean by "freer allocation/freeing of RAM" (garbage collection maybe?), but as far as fragmentation is concerned, that wouldn't be difficult to deal with in an embedded environment.

The only functions called by the Free42 core that aren't in the Free42 shell are malloc(3), realloc(3), and free(3). With a bit of C++ magic, those could all be overloaded to use movable memory blocks, and because the Free42 core is single-threaded, that wouldn't require any code changes to lock and unlock those memory blocks.

This wouldn't be something you could do in an afternoon or a weekend, but it shouldn't be a major rewrite either.

- Thomas