US Patent 9898197 Lock-free memory management

Described are techniques for memory management. An N-level bitmap is received, N>2. A memory pool is partitioned into slots each slot having a corresponding bit in level-1 of the N-level bitmap that indicates whether the slot is used or free. The slots are grouped into a hierarchy including N levels. A first thread receives a first request to allocate a first slot of the memory pool. Responsive to receiving the first request, the first thread performs first processing to allocate the first slot using the N-level bitmap. Allocation requests each to allocate slots from the memory pool are only processed by the first thread. A second thread receives a second request to free a second slot of the memory pool. Responsive to receiving the second request, the second thread performs second processing using the N-level bitmap to free the second slot. Requests to free slots are processed by multiple threads.