Editing Buddy memory allocation (section)

{{Short description|Computer algorithm}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2019}}
The '''buddy memory allocation''' technique is a [[memory allocation]] algorithm that divides memory into partitions to try to satisfy a memory request as suitably as possible. This system makes use of splitting memory into halves to try to give a best fit.  According to [[Donald Knuth]], the buddy system was invented in 1963 by [[Harry Markowitz]], and was first described by [[Ken Knowlton|Kenneth C. Knowlton]] (published 1965).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Knowlton |first1=Kenneth C. |title=A fast storage allocator |journal=Comm. ACM |date=1965 |volume=8 |page=623 |doi=10.1145/365628.365655}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first1=Kenneth C. |doi=10.1145/365758.365792 |last1=Knowlton |title=A programmer's description of L<sup>6</sup>. |journal=Commun. ACM |volume=9 |page=616 |date=1966}}</ref> The Buddy memory allocation is relatively easy to implement. It supports limited but efficient splitting and [[Coalescing (computer science)|coalescing of memory blocks]].