We use boost pool in our project and we found boost's pool may occupy too much memory. Say, if we need a block of memory which size is 1317B, boost's pool will allocate a truck of memory 5268B on a 32bits platform, leave 3951 bytes unused (it get worse on 64bits platform). I don't think it is necessary to allocate 5268B, for the sake of performance, only 1320B is enough for align. It should be resovled because pool is so important to many large application.

pool allocates several blocks of memory at once, then divvies them out. Nothing is wasted. Or did you have something else in mind? -- Cory Nelson Hi Nelson, thanks for your reply. According to the description of pool, it should be working like you said. But actually it is not the same. Hereby, there are two cases provided. I think you will find two totally different results between them. 1. blocksize = 1316 Everything is ok. . 2. blocksize =1317 Disaster! You can notice the waste allocated memory. I just want case 2 to run like case 1. Following is the code, you can check it. 1. i: 0 need: 41(KB) alloc: 41(KB) waste: 8(B) i: 32 need: 82(KB) alloc: 82(KB) waste: 8(B) i: 96 need: 164(KB) alloc: 164(KB) waste: 8(B) i: 224 need: 329(KB) alloc: 329(KB) waste: 8(B) i: 480 need: 658(KB) alloc: 658(KB) waste: 8(B) i: 992 need: 1(MB) alloc: 1(MB) waste: 8(B) i:2016 need: 2(MB) alloc: 2(MB) waste: 8(B) i:4064 need: 5(MB) alloc: 5(MB) waste: 8(B) i:8160 need: 10(MB) alloc: 10(MB) waste: 8(B) 2. i: 0 need: 41(KB) alloc: 164(KB) waste: 123(KB) i: 32 need: 82(KB) alloc: 329(KB) waste: 246(KB) i: 96 need: 164(KB) alloc: 658(KB) waste: 493(KB) i: 224 need: 329(KB) alloc: 1(MB) waste: 987(KB) i: 480 need: 658(KB) alloc: 2(MB) waste: 1(MB) i: 992 need: 1(MB) alloc: 5(MB) waste: 3(MB) i:2016 need: 2(MB) alloc: 10(MB) waste: 7(MB) i:4064 need: 5(MB) alloc: 20(MB) waste: 15(MB) i:8160 need: 10(MB) alloc: 41(MB) waste: 30(MB) here is the sample code: #include <iostream> #include <boost/pool/pool.hpp> #include <iomanip> #include <boost/lexical_cast.hpp> using namespace std; int i = 0; int nextSize = 0; int blockSize = 1317; string sizeFormat(int n) { if (n < 1024) { return boost::lexical_cast <string> (n) + "(B)"; } else if (n < 1048576) { return boost::lexical_cast <string> (n / 1024) + "(KB)"; } else { return boost::lexical_cast <string> (n / 1048576) + "(MB)"; } } struct MyAllocator { typedef std::size_t size_type; typedef std::ptrdiff_t difference_type; static char * malloc(const size_type bytes) { int need = nextSize * blockSize; int waste = bytes - need; cout << "i:" << setw(4) << i << " need:" << setw(10) << sizeFormat(nextSize * blockSize) << " alloc:" << setw(10) << sizeFormat(bytes) << " waste:" << setw(10) << sizeFormat(waste) << endl; return new (std::nothrow) char[bytes]; } static void free(char * const block) { delete [] block; } }; int main() { //typedef std::vector <int, MA <int> > MYVector; boost::pool <MyAllocator> intPool(blockSize); for (i = 0; i < 10000; ++i) { nextSize = intPool.get_next_size(); intPool.malloc(); } }