Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 28, 2026

Mimalloc

mimalloc is a free and open-source compact general-purpose memory allocator developed by Microsoft with focus on performance characteristics. The library is about 11000 lines of code and works as a drop-in replacement for malloc of the C standard library and requires no additional code changes. mimalloc was initially developed for the run-time systems of the Lean and Koka languages. Notable design aspects include free list sharding, eager page reset, and first-class heaps. It can co-exist with other memory allocators linked to the same program. mimalloc is available on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and *BSD. The source code is licensed under MIT License and available on GitHub.

Last revised
May 28, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
320 w
Citations
6
Source
Wikipedia ↗
mimalloc
Original authorsDaan Leijen /
Microsoft Research
DeveloperMicrosoft
Initial releaseJuly 2019 (2019-07)
Stable release
3.3.21 Edit this on Wikidata / 15 January 2026, and
3.2.7 release candidate 2 / 15 January 2026
Written inC
Operating systemWindows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, macOS, Linux
TypeSoftware library
LicenseMIT License
Websitemicrosoft.github.io/mimalloc/
Repositorygithub.com/microsoft/mimalloc

mimalloc (pronounced "me-malloc") is a free and open-source compact general-purpose memory allocator developed by Microsoft2 with focus on performance characteristics. The library is about 11000 lines of code and works as a drop-in replacement for malloc of the C standard library3 and requires no additional code changes.4 mimalloc was initially developed for the run-time systems of the Lean and Koka languages. Notable design aspects include free list sharding, eager page reset, and first-class heaps. It can co-exist with other memory allocators linked to the same program. mimalloc is available on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and *BSD.5 The source code is licensed under MIT License and available on GitHub.6

See also

See also

References

References

  1. "Release 3.3.2". 29 April 2026. Retrieved 30 April 2026.
  2. "Maruf Ali: Investigation of Memory Allocators" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-07-06. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  3. "Microsoft releases optimized malloc() as open source - Slashdot". slashdot.org. Archived from the original on 2023-06-14. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  4. "Analysis of mimalloc". Develop Paper. September 11, 2019. Archived from the original on July 23, 2022. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
  5. "Google Translate". translate.google.com. 25 June 2019.
  6. "microsoft/mimalloc". July 5, 2020. Archived from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020 – via GitHub.
Further reading

Further reading

External links