Patent ID: 8046543

Claim:
A method for preventing subpool thrashing comprising: determining an appropriate subpool expansion size needed to satisfy storage requests by processes able to utilize a subpool of memory; dynamically repeating the determining of the appropriate subpool expansion size as storage requirements change; selectively adding an expansion to the subpool to satisfy storage requests when additional storage is needed; queuing the added expansion on top of the subpool when a value of the subpool expansion size is a maximum size at a time that the added expansion is to be queued; queuing the added expansion on bottom of the subpool when the value of the subpool expansion size less than the maximum size at a time that the added expansion is to be queued; determining that processes utilizing the queued expansion of the subpool have completed processing so that the queued expansion is no longer immediately necessary for storage of values relating to currently executing processes; retaining only one expansion queued on top of the subpool and when the value of the subpool expansion size is the maximum size at a time the currently executing processes utilizing the queued expansion have completed processing; and releasing the queued expansion when the queued expansion is not on top of the subpool and when the queued expansion is on top of the subpool and when the value of the subpool expansion size is less than the maximum size at the time the currently executing processes utilizing the queued expansion have completed processing.