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Merged
merged 3 commits into from
Mar 5, 2023
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N43: blink-alloc #1298

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3e8bdf6
Add paragrapph about blink-alloc
zakarumych Mar 3, 2023
d436784
N43: blink-alloc: Style/fmt tweaks
ozkriff Mar 5, 2023
ffb04a9
Merge branch 'source' into blink-alloc
ozkriff Mar 5, 2023
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51 changes: 51 additions & 0 deletions content/news/043/index.md
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Expand Up @@ -314,6 +314,57 @@ generated Metal/GLSL preview.
[web demo]: https://not-fl3.github.io/miniquad-samples/shadertoy_cross.html
[macroquad-shadertoy]: https://github.com/not-fl3/macroquad/blob/master/examples/shadertoy.rs

### [blink-alloc]

[blink-alloc] is a brand new arena-allocator with bunch of improvements
over existing solutions that is
tested with [Miri] and follows ["Strict Provenance Rules"][strict-provenance].

> Arena-allocators offer extremely fast allocations and deallocations.
> Allocation is just a few pointer arithmetic operations.
> And deallocation is nearly no-op.
> In exchange arena-allocator requires a point in time when all
> previous allocations are unused to reset state.\
> Rust's borrow-checker ensures the requirement for reset making
> it 100% safe to use.
>
> TL;DR great for games, servers, cli tools and more.

blink-alloc provides thread-local and multi-threaded allocators -
`BlinkAlloc` and `SyncBlinkAlloc`.
Single-threaded version [performs many times faster than `bumpalo`][blink-bench].
The author couldn't find another implementation to compare
the multi-threaded version's performance.

It also provided ouf-of-the-box to fetch `BlinkAlloc` in task/thread
and return it back when done, keeping multiple `BlinkAlloc` instanced warmed.

On top of raw allocations blink-alloc provides `Blink` type
that works as safe allocator adaptor.
`Blink` can allocate memory and initialize it with values provided by user.
User may provide values as-is, as closures or iterators.
`Blink`'s API is safe with few exception for niche use cases.

Those familiar with `bumpalo` may think of `Blink` as of `bumpalo::Bump`.
Though `Blink`

- drops all placed values on reset,
which makes it usable with any kind of types without resource leaks.
- Accepts any iterator type, not just `ExactSizeIterator` implementations.
- Is configurable to use any `BlinkAllocator` implementation, thus not
tied to `Global`.

Currently Rust's standard collection types may use custom allocators
only one nightly and with `allocator_api` feature enabled.
blink-alloc uses `allocator-api2` crate to work on both stable and nightly.
Integration with other crates is simple and doesn't require depending on
blink-alloc, only on `allocator-api2`.

[blink-alloc]: https://github.com/zakarumych/blink-alloc
[blink-bench]: https://github.com/zakarumych/blink-alloc/blob/main/BENCHMARKS.md
[Miri]: https://github.com/rust-lang/miri
[strict-provenance]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/95228

## Popular Workgroup Issues in Github

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