diff --git a/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/drift.rs b/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/drift.rs
index 644e75a4581e9..cf1df1e91a50d 100644
--- a/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/drift.rs
+++ b/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/drift.rs
@@ -10,8 +10,8 @@ use crate::{cmp, intrinsics};
 
 /// Sorts `v` based on comparison function `is_less`. If `eager_sort` is true,
 /// it will only do small-sorts and physical merges, ensuring O(N * log(N))
-/// worst-case complexity. `scratch.len()` must be at least `max(v.len() / 2,
-/// MIN_SMALL_SORT_SCRATCH_LEN)` otherwise the implementation may abort.
+/// worst-case complexity. `scratch.len()` must be at least
+/// `max(v.len() - v.len() / 2, SMALL_SORT_GENERAL_SCRATCH_LEN)` otherwise the implementation may abort.
 /// Fully ascending and descending inputs will be sorted with exactly N - 1
 /// comparisons.
 ///
diff --git a/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/mod.rs b/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/mod.rs
index 7adcc83b818d1..3ff2e71fd05bc 100644
--- a/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/mod.rs
+++ b/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/mod.rs
@@ -41,6 +41,8 @@ pub fn sort<T, F: FnMut(&T, &T) -> bool, BufT: BufGuard<T>>(v: &mut [T], is_less
 
     cfg_if! {
         if #[cfg(any(feature = "optimize_for_size", target_pointer_width = "16"))] {
+            // Unlike driftsort, mergesort only requires len / 2,
+            // not len - len / 2.
             let alloc_len = len / 2;
 
             cfg_if! {
@@ -91,16 +93,26 @@ fn driftsort_main<T, F: FnMut(&T, &T) -> bool, BufT: BufGuard<T>>(v: &mut [T], i
     // By allocating n elements of memory we can ensure the entire input can
     // be sorted using stable quicksort, which allows better performance on
     // random and low-cardinality distributions. However, we still want to
-    // reduce our memory usage to n / 2 for large inputs. We do this by scaling
-    // our allocation as max(n / 2, min(n, 8MB)), ensuring we scale like n for
-    // small inputs and n / 2 for large inputs, without a sudden drop off. We
-    // also need to ensure our alloc >= MIN_SMALL_SORT_SCRATCH_LEN, as the
+    // reduce our memory usage to n - n / 2 for large inputs. We do this by scaling
+    // our allocation as max(n - n / 2, min(n, 8MB)), ensuring we scale like n for
+    // small inputs and n - n / 2 for large inputs, without a sudden drop off. We
+    // also need to ensure our alloc >= SMALL_SORT_GENERAL_SCRATCH_LEN, as the
     // small-sort always needs this much memory.
+    //
+    // driftsort will produce unsorted runs of up to min_good_run_len, which
+    // is at most len - len / 2.
+    // Unsorted runs need to be processed by quicksort, which requires as much
+    // scratch space as the run length, therefore the scratch space must be at
+    // least len - len / 2.
+    // If min_good_run_len is ever modified, this code must be updated to allocate
+    // the correct scratch size for it.
     const MAX_FULL_ALLOC_BYTES: usize = 8_000_000; // 8MB
     let max_full_alloc = MAX_FULL_ALLOC_BYTES / mem::size_of::<T>();
     let len = v.len();
-    let alloc_len =
-        cmp::max(cmp::max(len / 2, cmp::min(len, max_full_alloc)), SMALL_SORT_GENERAL_SCRATCH_LEN);
+    let alloc_len = cmp::max(
+        cmp::max(len - len / 2, cmp::min(len, max_full_alloc)),
+        SMALL_SORT_GENERAL_SCRATCH_LEN,
+    );
 
     // For small inputs 4KiB of stack storage suffices, which allows us to avoid
     // calling the (de-)allocator. Benchmarks showed this was quite beneficial.
diff --git a/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/quicksort.rs b/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/quicksort.rs
index 0c8308bfce00e..630c6ff907703 100644
--- a/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/quicksort.rs
+++ b/library/core/src/slice/sort/stable/quicksort.rs
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@ use crate::slice::sort::shared::smallsort::StableSmallSortTypeImpl;
 use crate::{intrinsics, ptr};
 
 /// Sorts `v` recursively using quicksort.
+/// `scratch.len()` must be at least `max(v.len() - v.len() / 2, SMALL_SORT_GENERAL_SCRATCH_LEN)`
+/// otherwise the implementation may abort.
 ///
 /// `limit` when initialized with `c*log(v.len())` for some c ensures we do not
 /// overflow the stack or go quadratic.
diff --git a/tests/ui/array-slice-vec/driftsort-off-by-one-issue-136103.rs b/tests/ui/array-slice-vec/driftsort-off-by-one-issue-136103.rs
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..42197ff102d72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/ui/array-slice-vec/driftsort-off-by-one-issue-136103.rs
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+//@ run-pass
+// Ensures that driftsort doesn't crash under specific slice
+// length and memory size.
+// Based on the example given in https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/136103.
+fn main() {
+    let n = 127;
+    let mut objs: Vec<_> =
+        (0..n).map(|i| [(i % 2) as u8; 125001]).collect();
+    objs.sort();
+}