volk_malloc.h File Reference

#include <volk/volk_common.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

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Functions
__VOLK_DECL_BEGIN VOLK_API void *	volk_malloc (size_t size, size_t alignment)
	Allocate size bytes of data aligned to alignment. More...
VOLK_API void	volk_free (void *aptr)
	Free's memory allocated by volk_malloc. More...

Function Documentation

VOLK_API void volk_free

(

void *

aptr

)

Free's memory allocated by volk_malloc.

Parameters

aptr	The aligned pointer allocaed by volk_malloc.

__VOLK_DECL_BEGIN VOLK_API void* volk_malloc	(	size_t	size,
		size_t	alignment
	)

Allocate size bytes of data aligned to alignment.

Because we don't have a standard method to allocate buffers in memory that are guaranteed to be on an alignment, VOLK handles this itself. The volk_malloc function behaves like malloc in that it returns a pointer to the allocated memory. However, it also takes in an alignment specfication, which is usually something like 16 or 32 to ensure that the aligned memory is located on a particular byte boundary for use with SIMD.

Internally, the volk_malloc first checks if the compiler is C11 compliant and uses the new aligned_alloc method. If not, it checks if the system is POSIX compliant and uses posix_memalign. If that fails, volk_malloc handles the memory allocation and alignment internally.

Because of the ways in which volk_malloc may allocate memory, it is important to always free volk_malloc pointers using volk_free.

Parameters

size	The number of bytes to allocate.
alignment	The byte alignment of the allocated memory.

Returns

pointer to aligned memory.