[Portaudio] STL/ISO C++ containers?

[Phil Burk]

On 3/24/11 12:20 PM, g4 at novadsp.com wrote:
> Not that I wish to trample rose patches here :)

What does that mean?

> On 24/03/2011 18:12, Phil Burk wrote:
>> The biggest argument against it is the dynamic memory allocation. Games
>> are almost always memory constrained and you don't want to run out of
>> memory on level 19 after playing for 7 hours straight! Even if you write
>> your own memory allocator you can still run out of memory
>
> Sorry, just don't get this. STL is not going to 'cause' this, it does
> not allocate (or deallocate) blindly. C++ is, after all, C++, not C# nor
> Java - it is deterministic.

I realize that STL will not allocate memory unless you call certain 
methods and only under certain circumstances.

 > If your STL implementation is running out of
> memory then your implementation is (almost certainly) wrong.

The issue is not that STL is running out of memory. The point is that 
your application may run out of memory.

On some systems the memory is limited. Game developers often push these 
limits. So running out of memory is not unthinkable. Fragmentation is 
also an issue, even with MMUs. The key point here is that if one is 
going to run out memory it must happen predictably and as early as 
possible. Then it can be discovered and fixed before the game ships. So 
game designers generally allocate all their memory up front when a level 
loads and avoid allocating anything during game play. This is because 
game play is not deterministic. A game may be played for hours and the 
possibilities are endless. The last thing they want is to get occasional 
out-of-memory errors after hours of random play.

Console game developers are shipping apps that generate hundreds of 
millions of dollars in revenue. They don't mess around. They often make 
blanket rules like "no memory allocation after initialization". To 
enforce this they sometimes require that modules do all their allocation 
at once.

Now I realize that PortAudio is not supported on game consoles like PS3. 
I just used the PS3 as one example of where STL might be rejected.


Phil Burk