Deep Dive into Memory Management

Memory turns out to be one of the core concepts when dealing with systems development. Allocating, freeing, and learning how memory is managed, and knowing what C++ can offer to simplify and manage memory, are crucial. This chapter will help you grasp how memory works by learning how to use C++ smart pointers, aligned memory, memory-mapped I/O, and allocators. 

This chapter will cover the following topics: 

• Learning automatic versus dynamic memory
• Learning when to use unique_ptr, and the implications for size
• Learning when to use shared_ptr, and the implications for size
• Allocating aligned memory
• Checking whether the memory allocated is aligned
• Dealing with memory-mapped I/O
• Dealing with allocators hands-on