Date
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Name
Bridging Performance and Reliability: A Configurable Baremetal Heap Allocator for LLVM-libc
Session Type
Technical Talk
Abstract

In this talk, we explore how we can enhance the LLVM-libc baremetal heap to make dynamic memory management faster, highly customizable, and significantly safer for embedded systems. Microcontrollers operate under tight constraints—often lacking traditional memory management units and requiring strict real-time performance—which makes standard memory allocators and heavy bug-catching sanitizers impractical. To solve this, we discuss how we can introduce a flexible "Mixed-TLSF-with-Trie" allocator that lets developers perfectly balance speed, memory usage, and latency for their specific hardware. Alongside performance that can rival standard allocators like dlmalloc, we show how we can also integrate lightweight, opt-in security features. These built-in tools can help developers easily catch common memory corruption bugs—like use-after-frees, double-frees, and out-of-bounds errors—without bogging down the system, bringing production-grade reliability to resource-constrained environments.

Location Name
Hall of Cities