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SmartHeap


Here's what users are saying about SmartHeap

Programmers who have worked on large projects are far too familiar with the decimation that constant use of malloc() and free() -- or C++ new and delete -- can wreak on available memory and program performance. Into the breach steps MicroQuill's SmartHeap.

This product puts an end to the madness by providing a small library of functions that handle all memory management. Depending on how much you want to rely on SmartHeap (you'll find the more you rely on it the better), you can have it override malloc() and free() or have it work in partnership with these functions.

Either way, you get a low-overhead package that specializes in fast memory allocation and in avoiding memory fragmentation. It accomplishes both of these tasks exceedingly well and -- most importantly -- reliably. The speed optimization is especially noticeable in systems with paged memory where SmartHeap consolidates frequent accesses into the fewest possible pages. It does all this through a simple-to-use API.

But there's more. Because SmartHeap manages memory, it can detect memory overwrites, leaks, and other inefficient uses of memory and report them as they occur with detailed error messages -- a wonderful bonus.

That such a tool is available at all is a blessing; that it is available on MSDOS, extended DOS, Windows, Win32, OS/2, Macintosh, and five flavors of UNIX is a miracle. Save yourself some aggravation and get smart, get SmartHeap.

Andrew Binstock
Software Development magazine
May 1995
(Announcing that SmartHeap won a 1994 Productivity Award for utilities)

Here's another essential [tool] that is virtually unnoticeable once you've added it, yet it saves you and your customers time. In debugging mode, SmartHeap performs every form of error checking that I know of (and I did write a book on this). The allocation routines in SmartHeap are faster than those in the Visual C++ run-time library. And SmartHeap really shines as your app's memory gets swapped to disk. What I like about SmartHeap is that you can add the code...and then forget that it's there until it points out a bug to you. Or when a user compliments you on how fast your app is.

David Theilen
Microsoft System Journal
March 1994

Performance boost is an inadequate description of the results when I added SmartHeap. One screen update that formerly took about 20 seconds now takes less than 2 seconds! Processes in the program that I never considered to be slow were speeded up noticeably. AMAZING!

Rob Garner
Senior Software Engineer
Cheyenne Software, Inc.

This is my first testimonial in four years; rarely do I run across a programming tool that so completely solves a problem that I cannot imagine how we could have done without it. After looking at these bugs, I am certain that they would have blown up during Beta, would have been impossible to reproduce, and would have caused an extremely painful delay in our product release. My deepest gratitude goes to everyone involved with producing and supporting SmartHeap for playing such a key role in our success. Without SmartHeap, we would have missed this Mother of all drop-deadlines.

Warren Stringer
TestDrive Corporation

Relinking with SmartHeap v.2.0 improved the overall performance of Lucid 3-D for Windows by 67% -- and many operations are literally 40-50 times faster. SmartHeap is an exceptionally well-designed product.

Robert Duffy
Lucid Corp.

Why did we buy SmartHeap? Because it provides an exceptionally fast, thread-safe, error-detecting malloc/new library that supports all the platforms on which we want to ship, including Windows and UNIX. We tested SmartHeap on advanced RDBMS cases which required over 3 million calls to malloc -- and the last malloc was just as fast as the first. If your code is malloc or new intensive, you can't afford not to use SmartHeap.

Larry Stilwell
Sextant Corp.

The library you sent me has proven to be rock-solid and blazingly fast. Damn good work!

Todd Williams
Mobil R&D

We were faced with a heap-corruption problem that had to be solved that day. Just by linking in SmartHeap we found that the 3rd-party code we were using incremented the pointer to an allocated block and we were calling free with an invalid pointer! We had planned to just use SmartHeap for debugging, but like it so much we ship it with the retail version.

Mark Bowers
Cypress Software Inc.

SmartHeap v.2.0's capability to detect memory overwrites and leakage have been a big benefit. It plugs in easily and performs like a champ when swapping virtual memory where other suballocators degrade significantly. If you're writing a serious application, you MUST use SmartHeap for memory management.

Mike Griffin
MECA Software, Inc.

Sometimes a big file in our Windows product 'Timing Designer' would read in 8.5-9 seconds, but after you used the application for awhile it would go up to 50...60...70 seconds. After we linked with SmartHeap, the read time stabilized at 8 seconds, no variation whatsoever. Then, by tuning the app with a couple of fixed-size heaps, I was able to shave off another 1.3 seconds. I think it's great!

Mike Meredith
Chronology Corp.

By merely relinking with SmartHeap and changing our .mak file in our OS/2 2.x application, we got an instant 50% overall performance improvement.

Dave Middleton
Trilogy

Sure, you could probably roll your own memory manager for Windows. But, SmartHeap offers a *fast*, robust, and most importantly, *fully debugged* memory manager for a fraction of the time, effort, and money.

Steven Antoch
Arcland

We've been shipping with SmartHeap for over 18 months -- and we have not found or even heard about a single bug. That's reliability!

Rick Williamson
FarPointe Technologies

Even when not in low-memory conditions, we found that, for test cases that involved large numbers of small objects, the performance of the application with SmartHeap v.2.0 was MUCH better. We are pleased with the choice of SmartHeap and have adopted it as our default heap manager.

Ken Burgett
Xerox Group Communications

TrackRecord used to thrash due to the design of the compiler-supplied allocator. We plugged in SmartHeap and the problem was solved! TrackRecord now shines in all memory situations. I highly recommend it!

David Nanian
Underware, Inc.

SmartHeap saved our butt in AutoCAD development. In addition to providing an immediate performance boost, it gave us increased stability on Win32s and -- most importantly of all -- incredible Error Checking.

Robert Wenig
AutoCAD Development
Autodesk

Why write your own memory manager? SmartHeap is fast, compact, cross-platform, and very reliable. And the extensive debugging features helped us a lot in the development stage.

Ning-Ju Nan
Adobe

I use SmartHeap under MSVC with our BIG Windows app. It works quite well, and the code is quite good. (I found 1 bug that was triggered by a large set of really obscure conditions. It was fixed promptly. That is the only problem in 3 years of usage.) That is one of the two DLLs that I have purchased that WORK reliably -- the other 6 or so have been buggy as sin.

John Lussmyer

SmartHeap has saved my tail many, many times without a single false alarm. I haven't been using it real long, but so far every time it has yelled, there's been a real bug.

Geoff Chalmers
Atlanta Development Center

SmartHeap integrates easily with C++ to provide a much-improved new and delete.

David Mandell
Plannet Crafters

Using SmartHeap on NT helped us to deliver a cleaner, faster voice recognition system on time. It's great to find a product that does everything it says. Every programmer should use it.

Roy Russell
Kurzweil

We have been using SmartHeap for Windows for one week and this is a really wonderful product. In some circumstances, the average performance of GeoConcept improved by 100%. Using SmartHeap's memory pools, fixed-size allocators, and handles allowed us to implement new functions we could not have included otherwise. Thanks to SmartHeap, it has really been a breeze to add and debug these new functions.

Luc Coiffier
Windows Product Manager
Alsoft

SmartHeap is the only third-party library we use in our development. While many other libraries seem to be solutions in search of a problem, SmartHeap gives us something we genuinely need: performance- and space-efficient, flexible Windows memory management with exceptional diagnostic support. Thanks for an excellent product.

David Rosenbaum
Blue Ribbon Soundworks

Before SmartHeap, I'd go get a coke, come back, and our app would still be redrawing. With SmartHeap, it redraws instantly.

Luis Malave
Milsoft

Just relinking to use SmartHeap took a task that formerly required 12+ hours to complete (if it completed at all) down to just over 2 hours and reliable completion. Heap fragmentation was my enemy; SmartHeap saved me at least 2 weeks of writing a robust allocator for the objects that were coming and going at a very fast pace.

Peter A. Vogel
Chromatic Research

By merely relinking with SmartHeap, on Windows 95 our file open speed improved from 1 minute to 30 seconds and file close went from 5 minutes to 15 seconds. These numbers speak for themselves!

Derek Burney
Director of Software Engineering, 3D Graphics
Corel Corp.

Performance boost is an inadequate description of the results when I added SmartHeap. One screen update that formerly took about 20 seconds now takes less than 2 seconds! Processes in the program that I never considered to be slow were speeded up noticeably. AMAZING!

Rob Garner
Senior Software Engineer
Cheyenne Software, Inc.


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