Free online book “Small Memory Software: Patterns for systems with limited memory” by James Noble. Once upon a time computer memory was one of the most expensive commodities on earth, and large amounts of human ingenuity were spent trying to simulate supernova explosions with nothing more than a future Nobel prize winner and a vast array of vacuum tubes.
Book Description
Nowadays many people have enough computer memory to simulate the destruction of most of the galaxy in any one of their hand-held phones, digital diaries, or microwave ovens. But at least two things have remained constant throughout the history of computing. Software design remains hard (Gamma et al. 1995), and its functionality still expands to fill the memory available (Potter 1948). This book addresses both these issues. Patterns have proved a successful format to capture knowledge about software design; these patterns in particular tackle memory requirements.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Small Architecture
- Secondary Storage
- Compression
- Data Structures
- Allocation