Tex-Mex and malloc(3C): Restaurant Hosts and Memory Allocators!
summary
Restaurant seating maps onto malloc: 35 tables handle 20–40 waiting parties (~120 people) so hosts push tables together, first fit seating boosts throughput and utilization but raises internal and external fragmentation, while slab allocation–style holding of specific tables preserves capacity for large parties at the cost of lower utilization. Measured with throughput, utilization, TTL and a bespoke FIFO fidelity metric, the heuristics (holding, double/triple seating, observing pay times) trade fairness for efficiency and partially succeed depending on queue composition.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:51Restaurant hosts vs allocators
- 3:39Staff rules and incentives
- 5:24Measuring effectiveness
- 8:30Allocation strategies
- 10:13Summary
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