The mt allocator [hereinafter referred to simply as "the allocator"] is a fixed size (power of two) allocator that was initially developed specifically to suit the needs of multi threaded applications [hereinafter referred to as an MT application]. Over time the allocator has evolved and been improved in many ways, in particular it now also does a good job in single threaded applications [hereinafter referred to as a ST application]. (Note: In this document, when referring to single threaded applications this also includes applications that are compiled with gcc without thread support enabled. This is accomplished using ifdef's on __GTHREADS). This allocator is tunable, very flexible, and capable of high-performance.

The aim of this document is to describe - from an application point of view - the "inner workings" of the allocator.