That would be like a "first-fit-or-die" malloc, wouldn't it? Which mechanism to choose always depends on your (de-)allocation profile and available memory. If you can free out-of-order, the circular buffer will fragment quickly.
> If you can free out-of-order, the circular buffer will fragment quickly.
Right, just when coding a network protocol for embedded, often you can free in the same order, i.e. it’s often a good idea to limit parallelism to a small number of FIFO streams (ideally a single one).
That’s only for small chips. When they aren’t small e.g. you have a quad-core ARM with a gig of RAM you usually have OS anyway and the programming is totally different, much higher level and you guaranteed to have a fast malloc and lots more.
