davisusanibar commented on a change in pull request #12603: URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/12603#discussion_r828342652
########## File path: docs/source/java/memory.rst ########## @@ -0,0 +1,174 @@ +.. Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one +.. or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file +.. distributed with this work for additional information +.. regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file +.. to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the +.. "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance +.. with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at + +.. http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 + +.. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, +.. software distributed under the License is distributed on an +.. "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY +.. KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the +.. specific language governing permissions and limitations +.. under the License. + +================= +Memory Management +================= + +.. contents:: + +The memory modules contain all the functionality that Arrow uses to manage memory (allocation and deallocation). +This section will introduce you to the major concepts in Java’s memory management: + +* `BufferAllocator`_ +* `ArrowBuf`_ +* `Reference counting`_ + +Getting Started +=============== + +Arrow's memory management is built around the needs of the columnar format and using off-heap memory. +Also, it is its own independent implementation, and does not wrap the C++ implementation. + +Arrow offers a high level of abstraction providing several access APIs to read/write data into a direct memory. + +Arrow provides multiple modules: the core interfaces, and implementations of the interfaces. +Users need the core interfaces, and exactly one of the implementations. + +* ``Memory Core``: Provides the interfaces used by the Arrow libraries and applications. +* ``Memory Netty``: An implementation of the memory interfaces based on the `Netty`_ library. +* ``Memory Unsafe``: An implementation of the memory interfaces based on the `sun.misc.Unsafe`_ library. + +BufferAllocator +=============== + +The BufferAllocator interface deals with allocating ArrowBufs for the application. + +The concrete implementation of the allocator is RootAllocator. Applications should generally create one RootAllocator at the +start of the program, and use it through the BufferAllocator interface. Allocators have a memory limit. The RootAllocator +sets the program-wide memory limit. The RootAllocator is responsible for being the master bookkeeper for memory allocations. + +Arrow provides a tree-based model for memory allocation. The RootAllocator is created first, then all allocators +are created as children ``BufferAllocator.newChildAllocator`` of that allocator. + +One of the uses of child allocators is to set a lower temporary limit for one section of the code. Also, child +allocators can be named; this makes it easier to tell where an ArrowBuf came from during debugging. + +ArrowBuf +======== + +ArrowBuf represents a single, contiguous allocation of `Direct Memory`_. It consists of an address and a length, +and provides low-level interfaces for working with the contents, similar to ByteBuffer. + +The objects created using ``Direct Memory`` take advantage of native executions and it is decided natively by the JVM. Arrow +offer efficient memory operations base on this Direct Memory implementation (`see section below for detailed reasons of use`). + +Unlike (Direct)ByteBuffer, it has reference counting built in (`see the next section`). + +Reference counting +================== + +Direct memory involve more activities than allocate and deallocate because allocators (thru pool/cache) +allocate buffers (ArrowBuf). + +Arrow uses manual reference counting to track whether a buffer is in use, or can be deallocated or returned +to the allocator's pool. This simply means that each buffer has a counter keeping track of the number of references to +this buffer, and end user is responsible for properly incrementing/decrementing the counter according the buffer is used. + +In Arrow, each ArrowBuf has an associated ReferenceManager that tracks the reference count, which can be retrieved +with ArrowBuf.getReferenceManager(). The reference count can be updated with ``ReferenceManager.release`` and +``ReferenceManager.retain``. + +Of course, this is tedious and error-prone, so usually, instead of directly working with buffers, we should use +higher-level APIs like ValueVector. Such classes generally implement Closeable/AutoCloseable and will automatically +decrement the reference count when closed method. + +.. code-block:: + + |__ A = Allocator + |____ B = IntVector (reference count = 2 ) Review comment: Deleted -- This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service. 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