System and method of a shared memory allocator

1. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having executable instructions to cause one or more processing units to perform a method to allocate a shared memory buffer for an object, the method comprising:

receiving an allocation request for the shared memory buffer for the object;

allocating the shared memory buffer from shared memory of a network device, wherein the shared memory buffer is accessible by a writer and a plurality of readers;

returning a writer pointer to the writer;

storing the object in the shared memory buffer, wherein the writer accesses the shared memory using the writer pointer;

sharing the writer pointer with at least a first reader of the plurality of readers, wherein the writer and the first reader have different memory spaces; and

generating a reader pointer using at least the writer pointer, wherein the reader pointer is expressed in a memory space of the first reader.

2. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising:

retrieving versions of the object at differing time points; and

comparing the retrieved versions.

3. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 2 , wherein the retrieval of versions of the object comprises:

reading a first version of the object;

reading the object from the shared memory buffer;

reading a second version of the object; and

returning the object when the first and second versions match.

4. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the first and second version are associated with one of a plurality of entries in the object.

5. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the first version is cached by the first reader.

6. The non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the first and second versions are a root version for an object that includes a plurality of nodes stored in the shared memory buffer.

7. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the allocation of the shared memory buffer comprises:

allocating the buffer within one of a plurality of regions that have been allocated for the writer.

8. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 7 , wherein the allocation of the shared memory buffer further comprises:

determining that the one of the plurality of regions has enough free space to allocate the buffer.

9. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the reader pointer and the writer pointer are identical.

10. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the allocation of the shared memory buffer comprises:

checking for shared memory growth; and

allocating a region when a size of the object is greater than an allocable space in the shared memory.

11. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein generating the reader pointer comprises:

accessing a map that correlates a base address with the reader pointer, wherein a region map is used for the generating and wherein a writer pointer to reader pointer translation is cached.

12. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising:

notifying at least the first reader when the object in the shared memory buffer changes.

13. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first reader maps a writer shared memory region at a point in time when data from that region is required.

14. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first reader releases a writer shared memory region in response to a notification received by the first reader.

15. A method to allocate a shared memory buffer for an object, the method comprising:

receiving an allocation request for the shared memory buffer for the object;

allocating the shared memory buffer from shared memory of a network device, wherein the shared memory buffer is accessible by a writer and a plurality of readers;

returning a writer pointer to the writer;

storing the object in the shared memory buffer, wherein the writer accesses the shared memory using the writer pointer;

sharing the writer pointer with at least a first reader of the plurality of readers, wherein the writer and the first reader have different memory spaces; and

generating, for at least a first reader of the plurality of readers, a reader pointer using at least the writer pointer, wherein the reader pointer is expressed in a memory space of the first reader.

16. The method of claim 15 , further comprising:

retrieving versions of the object at differing time points; and

comparing the retrieved versions.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein the retrieval of versions of the object comprises:

reading a first version of the object;

reading the object from the shared memory buffer;

reading a second version of the object; and

returning the object when the first and second versions match.

18. The method of claim 15 , wherein the allocation of the shared memory buffer comprises:

allocating the buffer within a region.

19. The method of claim 15 , wherein the allocation of the shared memory buffer comprises:

checking for shared memory growth; and

allocating a region when a size of the object is greater than an allocable space in the shared memory.

20. The method of claim 15 , wherein the generating the reader pointer comprises:

translating a base address to the reader pointer using a region map, wherein the region map maps the base address to the reader pointer.