US Patent 9069477 Reuse of dynamically allocated memory

Overall memory requirements are minimized by performing copy on write and collapse on write operations using memory pointers when storing data within memory pages. Multiple memory pointers may refer to a primary page storing a definitive copy of data. When that data is to be modified, a copy on write operation creates a second copy in another memory page which may then be modified and updates memory pointers accordingly. When data within two or more memory pages is identical to data within a primary page, a collapse on write operation updates memory pointers to refer to the primary page and de-allocates the duplicative and now unused memory pages.