[plt-scheme] bytes 'n bits 'n pieces

At Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:29:05 -0400, Eric Tanter wrote:
> . what is the actual size of an allocated object? (empty objects with  
> either no fields or a single next object reference)

The GC adds a 1-word overhead to every allocated object. A Scheme value
also always has a tag, which adds another word. (There are a lot of
otherwise unused bits in those two words that get used for hash codes.)
Finally, on most platforms, the GC rounds all object sizes up to a
multiple of 8.

> . since I also want to be able to evaluate how much memory a given  
> list will occupy, how much does a cons cell use?

4 words, of which 1 word is GC overhead and 1 word is tagging overhead.

> I noticed that even with 768MB I can't create a list (in a tail  
> recursive manner of course) of 100,000,000 elements (element = null).  

On a 32-bit platform, a list that long should consume about 1.6GB.

A list of 10,000,000 items will use about 160MB. To build the list, the
GC will push actual memory use up two around 300MB, since collections
are triggered roughly when memory use is twice as large as since the
most recent collection.